


Anchorless

by Lullabyes



Category: Blood+
Genre: Action & Romance, Established Relationship, F/M, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Nostalgia, Revenge, Smut, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 10:45:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 59,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11057331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lullabyes/pseuds/Lullabyes
Summary: SayaxHaji. Set in the distant future. With Haji missing, a newly-awakened Saya must set out to get him back. Memoirs and reminiscence, suspense and drama, and a new enemy with a score to settle with Saya. COMPLETE.





	1. Polaris Amiss

 

_The Blood+ bug has bit me again. Go figure._

_This story came as another whim—yes, I am full of 'em—that formed a weak-ass plot somewhere along the line. The lesser said about it, the better. I've reached the conclusion that this show makes me want to be wordy. I am usually not wordy at all. But something about this series makes me want to describe everything, particularly emotion or color. Maybe because the two themes are played with so much throughout the series._

_Anyhow. This is probably an overdone genre, with Saya and co. coming awake to fight Yet Another Enemy, yahta yahta, so I took some liberties by setting it in the distant (real distant) future, when Saya and Haji are an actual couple. Instead of documenting them as tentatively entering the realm of couplehood, I figured, "Hell, why not just make nostalgia this thing's main theme? If I was an immortal, I'd be nostalgic of everything."_

_Also, I decided to avoid using Japanese pair names for Diva's daughters, since, 1) Me no good at Japanese, and 2) Me love Greek myth._

_I've also flexed the Queens' hibernation theory a bit, since I'm unsure when exactly Chiropteran queens go into their long sleep (Saya was living in Joel's mansion for decades, and she sure as hell didn't hibernate there.) Let's just exercise 'artistic' license and assume the twins are at the age where they haven't hit the Big Sleep era yet, and that Haji and Saya have been together for a comfortably longass time. Spoilers for practically the whole series._

_Please review and let me know what you think._

_I do not own Blood Plus and make no profit out of writing this story._

_I just do it to kill time._

* * *

It is the crest of nightfall, and the streets are damp with rain. Streetlights glisten off wet tarmac, and a murky fog wreathes the air. Occasionally a car roars across the streets, wheels churning splatter, headlights dashing dark shadows across the walls.

A young woman stands leaning by the wall, wreathed in murky shadow. Dark long hair spilling to a narrow waist frames a heart-shaped ivory face, a set of dark, assessing eyes. Pale pink lips are pressed tight, half in impatience, half in contemplation. A dark coat, collar pulled to her cheeks, shields her pensive features.

The way she eyes her surroundings suggests that she is new to the neighborhood, and reluctant to advertise the fact.

Either that, or that she has visited the neighborhood a long time ago, longer still than her unlined young face would intimate.

As if she has set out looking for home, only to find it inexplicably gone.

_Where are you?_

Saya's eyes flick across the empty street. Despite the coat covering her, the cloak of the darkness around her, she feels as naked and exposed as a raw nerve to air. Ever since coming awake in the old tomb, blinking dregs of her thirty-year sleep from her eyes, she has been unable to shake the sensation.

The dispiriting solitude, the sense of abandonment and confusion.

Because, this time, _he_ has not been there to greet her.

_Haji…_

_Where are you?_

Strangers had been there to tend to her at the tomb. A throwback of Red Shield, existing for the sole purpose of ensuring her safety, and Haji's, and that of her nieces. Kai's too, when he had been alive, although that was a very long time ago. Close to a century has passed since Saya's battle with Diva, but Red Shield still plays a practical role in her life, in keeping her settled, secure.

However, upon her questions, none of the Red Shield members are aware where Haji might be.

In the ensuing days, she has clawed at one explanation after another. That he is held up somewhere. That he has been delayed with unforeseen circumstances. That he is occupied with something pressing.

But each explanation has left her more dissatisfied than the last.

He is a creature of habit. She knows him as intimately as she knows her own pulse, her own breath. For each and every Awakening, he has been present, the first beloved face her hazy eyes behold, the first steady hand her brittle fingers grasp for. Her life, the life of a wandering immortal, a Chiropteran Queen without a kingdom, has undergone relocations, displacements, each time she has awakened from sleep to greet a new world.

A shuffled deck of cards, that is what she likens it to. A new place each time, even when it is still the same country, even when she has visited it thirty years before. But, juxtaposed with the present, it stirs new emotions, new sensations, as though she is experiencing everything afresh.

Despite how long she has lived, the colors around her have never dulled, and scent or sound has never diminished.

Haji has often told her, in tender moments, that it is not so much that the world remains ever-fresh, but that her own nature compels her to seek delight in everything she sees. The open curiosity of a goddess, sent to be reacquainted with the world each time, relishing every aspect her surroundings can offer.

In reply, she has always reminded him that her delight and relish comes only from his unbroken presence at her side.

In each and every strange new country, each unfamiliar year, he has been there to guide her way, bright and steady as her ever-burning Polaris.

But this time…

This time…

_Where are you, Haji? What's happened?_

Saya feels tears scald her eyes. She brusquely wipes them away. Their presence is both unwanted and unfamiliar to her. Indeed, as the years have gone by, her life has become a positive stranger to tears, or to grief in general. She has never imagined, after the trials she has suffered, the blood she has spilled, that her existence could ever go on to be so profoundly rich, so brimming with laughter and satisfaction.

Perhaps that is why this calamity has befallen her now? To remind her never to be too complacent, to never take anything for granted.

Especially not _him_.

 _But I never took any of it for granted,_ she thinks fiercely. _How could I, after everything the two of us suffered? We knew how blessed we were. We reminded each other every day. I was so happy._

_I was so…_

She hears the smooth purr of an engine. The cars around her have changed during her lengthy sleep, their shapes sleeker, more angular, more compact. But _cars_ are what they continue to be, and the one that idles to a halt beside her is no exception.

Saya tenses for a fraction of a second. Her face is pale as it reflects in the black window. Then the window rolls down, and the face that emerges from behind it fills her with equal parts relief and joy.

A young woman, to all appearances barely within a year of age from Saya. Calm, intense blue eyes. Sharp bangs cut in an angular halo, falling around an attractive porcelain face.

Saya beams. "Alecto!"

Saya's niece, the elder daughter of Diva, greets her with a warm smile. "Aunt Saya. You look well."

"We're so glad you're all right!" erupts the girl seated beside Alecto. A flurry of wispy black curls tumbling around her shoulders, her face a breathtaking doppelganger of Alecto's, but with warm mahogany eyes of a bright depth. Alecto's younger twin, Megaera. "We got here as fast as we could!"

"I'm so relieved to see someone I know," Saya said. "Please, tell me. What's going on? Where is Haji?"

"You'd better get inside, aunt Saya," Alecto advises. Systematic, in-control as always. Since she has been a girl, Saya has seen flashes of Riku in her quiet maturity, in her reserved manner. And, as she has grown older, glimmers of the intelligence, the command Diva herself might have possessed, had not her tragic history unspooled her sanity.

Megaera on the other hand, is a variation of Saya. Passionate, temperamental, impulsive, but fiercely loyal to her friends and family. Her strengths are different from her sister's, but no less potent. There are certain aspects of her that Saya has even be tempted to connect with Kai, particularly her blustering temper.

"Come on, aunt Saya," Meg presses, extending a hand. "Get in quick. You look cold. Besides, the streets here aren't safe anymore. Even for us."

"What do you mean?" Saya asks. But she does as she is told, sidling into the crisp back seat of the car. The interior is warm and dry, and Saya feels instantly protected, although that probably owes more to the presence of her nieces than any superficial elements.

Alecto starts the car and pulls out of the street. "Saya, there's been trouble brewing during your sleep."

"Trouble?"

"That's right. Of the Chiropteran kind."

Saya stiffens. "Chiropteran?"

Meg turns in her seat to regard Saya. "It seems that someone's been trying to rejuvenate the old Chiropteran experiments, from back when our mother was alive."

"No!"

"We wish. The trouble started barely five months before you were supposed to awaken. Sudden reports of chiropteran attacks, eye-witness sightings of monsters, just like in the early days of the war."

Saya's blood feels like ice. "And… Haji?"

Megaera hesitates, then glances back at Alecto. The older twin exhales, and says, without taking her eyes off the road. "Let's get you back to our apartment, Saya. There's a lot we have to talk about."


	2. Interlude: Anchorless

_Interlude: Anchorless_

* * *

That first year she awoke, after the MET disaster, at the Miyagusku tomb, Kai was there to greet her. A grown man now, tanned and sinewy, reddish hair peppered with gray, face lined with age, but eyes regarding her with the same love and welcome that she remembered from their earliest years.

The twins had flanked him, an elegant guard of honor, and Saya had been stunned to remember that these young women were actually her nieces. It was their eyes that had enabled her to make the connection, and the grief and wonder that had rocked her in that instant had nearly crumpled her to the floor.

Grief for Diva, for the fate she had suffered, for the death Saya had so desperately wanted to share with her. Wonder for how fast time had flown, for how startling and astonishing her kindred had evolved to be.

" _I was so afraid, when I first learnt about Diva's pregnancy, that her children would release nothing but destruction on the world_ ," she had confessed to Kai, later that night. " _But I see now, how wrong I was. You've done such a good job with them Kai. I can't begin to tell you how much. I think Dad would've been really proud. And… Riku too_."

Kai had smiled, tears glittering in his eyes, the creases on his mouth and brow sharp, but his expression unchanged from the one in her memories. " _You made it possible for me, Saya. For all of us. You taught us how precious this life is, and that none of us has a right to take it for granted_."

And none of them had. She had felt instantly comfortable in their fold, into the intricate mesh of warmth that they had woven among themselves, a mesh they welcomed her into with open arms.

As the days had passed, she had reestablished her bond with Kai, gotten in touch with all her old friends. She had grown to know both her nieces, to like them and understand them. The origin of their names, the two Furies out of a gang of three, taken from a chapter of Greek myth. (She'd expected Lulu's fine hand behind that; Kai had probably just agreed because he'd thought the names sounded pretty.)

" _We've always said we're missing the third Fury_ ," Alecto remarked with a wry smile. " _But maybe because that's supposed to be you, aunt Saya_."

" _Probably_ ," Megaera giggled. " _With all the stories we heard from Kai, you'd sure fit the bill_."

Saya smiled. " _Maybe. Although right now, my days in any kind of 'fury' are numbered_. _At least I hope so_."

Alecto nodded, sobering. " _We don't really remember any of it, but we understand you went through so much, to ensure that everyone would be alive here today. For that, we're grateful to you. We hope you'll finally find some peace now._ "

" _We're going to count on it_ ," Meg added, pressing Saya's hands.

Saya's eyes had felt hot, tears of both sadness and love forming a lump to large to swallow in her throat. She smiled tremulously at her nieces, and pressed Meg's hands back. " _Thank you_."

But despite how effusively cocooned with love she had felt, despite the radiating warmth that had suffused her being with her family, she still felt a hollowness inside, an emptiness that would not heal. A single name had been flitting wide and low through her mind, ever since she had opened her eyes.

_Haji._

_Where is he…?_

She had asked Kai about the whereabouts of her Chevalier. Kai had confessed, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck, that there had been no sign of him. Not since the pink, ribbon-wrapped rose he had found outside the tomb. For all they knew, Haji might not even be alive any more.

" _I'm real sorry, Saya_ ," Kai added with a gruff tenderness, squeezing her shoulder in his work-calloused hand. " _I know…how you felt about him_."

Saya swallowed and shut her eyes. " _I know. I just… I miss him. So much_."

Kai looked at her sadly, but said nothing more.

That night, she had gone out alone for a walk to the beach. Struggling to recapture the same shoreline where she had first heard Kai tell her, _Nankurunaisa_ , moonlight silvering the surf and her tears. The same spot where her friends and family had held the barbecue to honor their father's death, fireworks sparkling red and yellow in the sky, the night ringing with laughter and voices and the air immersed in overcooked beef.

The same spot where, from his perch at the steps, Haji had played his cello at sunset, and upon her prompting, offered to give her answers about her blood-drenched past.

But Okinawa's shoreline had changed since her sleep, and though she searched in vain, that area was long gone. It resided only in her own mind now, and she felt the tears gush out of her eyes as she stood there, wind whipping her hair and clothes, peering sightlessly at the glittering water as if trying to drown herself, or go blind.

_Haji… Haji… where are you?_

She sat there alone, and cried for hours, an outrush that seemed unstoppable. She could never erase the memory of Diva's last concert, of the words he had spoken to her, cool scaly hands clasping hers to gently pry away her sword. A single drop of water, glittering like a tear on his pale fine-boned face. The calm but melancholy look in his eyes, the words he had spoken to her then.

_Please live on._

_You don't have to fight anymore._

He had been right. Forever her constant guide, her glowing Polaris, he had guided her out of a self-willed suicide and into a life of vibrant light and verve.

But without him, anchorless, rootless, how was she ever going to find her way here on?

" _Saya_?"

The low familiar voice that spoke her name had sent her whirling around in stark fright. Had she lost her mind? Was she dreaming?

It was _his_ voice she had heard.

And then, more unreal still, she had seen him there. Standing like a lone black pillar in the powdery white sand, outlined by moonlight. Face pale and calm, eyes holding hers with the same mesmeric, gentling gaze that sabotaged her dreams each night since her Awakening.

Her shock had been so absolute it had rendered her paralyzed.

Then, again, the apparition of Haji had spoken. " _Saya? Don't you… recognize me?_ "

Her heart had pounded so fast in her chest she was afraid it would fly out. She felt as though she were caught in some surreal, frightening spell, as if she was no longer entrenched in reality.

Then, unbidden, his name had tumbled from her lips. " _Ha—Haji_."

He inclined his head. " _Yes, Saya_."

She told herself firmly that she wasn't dreaming, that she wasn't going crazy. It was _his_ face, _his_ voice. He was standing right in front of her. He was still alive.

" _I…I thought you'd left me forever_ ," she stammered, and the tears surged anew, spilling across her face, tracking hot paths across her wind-chilled skin.

He was at her side in the space of an eyeblink, and she relished the solid arms that wrapped around her, the encompassing grip that steadied her and drew her close. The sensory establishment was enough to convince her she wasn't deluded; he was really _here_ , he was still _with her_!

His lips were cool and soft against her fevered brow, brushing across her tear-streaked face, at the lashes webbed-wet with tears. When he spoke, his voice was low, but with the faintest tremor that spoke volumes about the depth of his emotion, his joy at their long-awaited reunion.

" _How could I go anywhere without you, Saya?_ _I would never be able to exist, without you."_

She squeezed her eyes shut, pressed her cheek to his chest and held him so tight she could imagine them never separating, never imagining that they could. " _Haji, please promise never to leave me again_."

His lips against her forehead, mouthing the words more than speaking them, with a subtle vibration in his throat. " _I promise, Saya. I will never go anywhere without you. I swear it."_


	3. Postponement

The twins' apartment is small but neatly-furnished. Pale cream walls, warm red throw-rugs, overstuffed blue couches. Everything is more or less recognizable to Saya, despite her thirty-year absence from the real world. The most outlandish appliances are only in the kitchen, which is a realm of black lacquer and unfamiliar contraptions decorating the shelves. Eggbeaters look like blenders, deep-fryers like microwaves.

At least the fridge hasn't been replaced by any new invention. And the food inside seems more or less recognizable to Saya—or more appropriately, her tastebuds.

She sits at the table and gorges to make up for several days of meager feeding, while her nieces chuckle and stand nearby, watching.

Behind Saya, the door to one of the rooms opens, and a young man steps out. Tall, lanky, with wavy light-blond hair that curls a little too long over his collar, and intelligent gray eyes. The way he carries himself around the apartment suggests that he lives there too. Saya has never seen him before, yet when she sees him, she feels a flicker of something, a deep-ingrained connection, identical to what she feels for her nieces.

The first words the young man speaks are aimed at Meg. "Is this her?"

Meg nods. "In the flesh."

He turns and greets Saya with a grin. "Meg said you were a big eater. I didn't believe her at first, but you're _really_ putting the food away."

Saya tries to swallow the antipasto she is working on without choking. "Who—who are you?"

The young man looks sheepish. "Oh—I'm sorry. I didn't introduce myself, did I? My name's Tyler."

Megaera smiles. "We've told Ty so much about you. Especially when Haji was around. It was all any of us ever talked about."

Saya blinks in surprise. "Then he knows about—"

"About what we are?" Meg nods, and threads her arms around Tyler's waist, pressing her cheek to his shoulder. Tyler smiles and puts an arm around her, a simple gesture that conveys without words what their relationship is. "He should, to be honest. After all, since last year, Ty's one of us."

"One of… us?"

"He's Meg's Chevalier," Alecto cuts in. "Meg had been with him for almost three years now, but the transformation happened just last year."

"What? How?"

"Hit and run," Tyler explains, and his shoulders droop a little. "We were all out at the wharves really late at night. Some psycho rammed me ten feet through the air with his car and took off. He left me bleeding to death. The closest hospital wasn't for miles, so to save my life, Meg… turned me."

Saya blinks. A Chevalier?

At any rate, it explains the primal recognition she felt the moment she saw him. Another individual tied to her by their blood, a virtual stranger in her eyes. She is not sure whether to be pleased, or disturbed.

"Tyler already knew all about us before it happened," Meg adds. "He was adopted by a family that worked with Red Shield. They never forget about the war, or the sacrifices everyone in the organization made to keep this world safe from Chiropterans."

"Even though I was just a boy," Tyler says to Saya. "My adopted parents used to tell me about you. About everything you'd done, all the trials you went through. And I guess they were told all this by their grandparents. That's how the legend was passed on. It's sort of surreal to be standing here now, actually talking to you."

"I—" Saya falters, unsure of what to say to him.

Alecto mercifully spares her the need. "Saya, we need to talk about what's going on."

Saya nods, sobering. She pushes her half-eaten meal aside. "Alecto, Meg, tell me. Who is trying to bring Chiropterans back? And where's Haji? Why wasn't he there at the tomb when I woke up?"

Alecto's eyes are shaded. "Saya, Haji's been missing for five months now. Ever since these Chiropteran attacks started. We'd already received intel about fishy activity happening at one of Red Shield's labs in Iceland. News that someone was poking around there, asking questions."

"Iceland?"

"That's right. Red Shield established a private laboratory there, with the intent to better understand Chiropteran origins and all that. A bunch of rich scientists paid it a visit."

Megaera puts in, "They looked like a bunch of geeks interested in the theory of human evolution, subspecies and all that crap. They asked a lot of questions, went through a lot of reports. Some without authorization. The security showed 'em the door, and the head honchos did a background check, trying to figure out exactly who those men were and what they wanted."

"Except there were no leads. The scientists seemed to have showed up out of nowhere, and vanished again. We were about to dismiss it as non-serious, but then, the Chiropterans showed up. There were reports of violent deaths, of bodies drained completely of blood. Monsters prowling in the dark."

"Haji came to see us about a week after the first report," Meg adds. "We'd already expected him here, since we knew you were scheduled to awaken pretty soon. He told us that there was a good chance the source of these Chiropterans was this private company in Berlin. He'd been watching the area for some time, and there were signs that the Chiropterans had been released from there, let loose among the humans. He left the same night, hoping to get more information. And…"

"And we haven't heard from him since," Alecto ends, her brow knitting.

Saya's throat is parched. "Haven't you sent anyone else to that place? To check if he might be kept prisoner there?"

Tyler shakes his head. "We've tried. Believe me. But the place is practically impregnable. There's no way to get in unnoticed, which is probably why even Haji couldn't make it. And that guy could creep like a ghost. He was teaching me to be as good as him, but without the proper lessons…" He shrugs and trails off.

"Since he disappeared, the Chiropteran reports have been on the rise," Alecto adds. "Red Shield recently got in touch with us, after they managed to capture a live Chiropteran. When Meg's blood or mine was introduced it its system, there was no reaction. That left them to conclude that these Chiropterans were made with our own mother's blood."

"With… Diva's?" Saya's skin is rough with gooseflesh.

"That's right. Then they took a small sample of your blood, injected the Chiropteran with it. And guess what happened?"

"Hello. Crystallization," Meg sings.

Tyler on the other hand, is grim. "Since then, it's been imperative that you wake up. We need your blood to stop these monsters. You have to help us. You're the only shot we have at cinching this before it gets out of hand. Our last remaining hope."

_We need your blood…_

_You are our last remaining hope…_

Deja vu strikes Saya with a sudden shocking wallop. Her hands tremble, but she swallows, forcing them to stay steady.

How long ago has it been, since she has heard those dismal words, those words that once tied her entire existence to bloodshed and death and madness? How happy she had been, to know she would never hear them again. To have a reprieve from all the suffering and pain.

Except it was not really a reprieve at all. Just a postponement of the inevitable.

She has to fight again.

_Saya. You must fight now…_

At last, the realization stuns her, with the blinding immediacy of a lightning bolt. During that prolonged, torturous battle, for every second she bled and suffered and raged, _he_ had been with her. Her constant shadow, her confidant and closest ally. He had been as vital to her side as her sword had been to her hand.

_Ohgod. How am I going to do this without him…?_

_Haji… where are you?_

Grief overwhelms her; the tears threaten to seep through. Saya shuts her eyes tight and wills them away, wills them into the fortitude, the determination she will need to get through this new disaster that has been hurled upon her and her family.

Exhaling, she opens her eyes and looks up at her nieces. Her gaze burns a vibrant red. "All right. I'm ready to help you. I'm ready to fight."

* * *

Alecto leads Saya into the spare bedroom. Saya is amazed by the elaborate clutter that accosts her. Boxes stacked in corners, a few of them opened and spilling their exotic contents like colorful treasure. Silks and laces and fans, embellished vases, embroidered cloths, decorative masks, and an endless assortment of bric-a-brac.

"I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of bringing all the stuff from your last home here," Alecto says, with a slight smile. "Some of the things are practically antique, but Meg and I like to go through them. Whenever you're asleep, they remind us of you."

Saya manages a faint smile. "That's sweet. Thank you for keeping them."

Meg snickers and leans on Alecto's shoulder, a gesture that has remained unchanged since the days of their youth. "You collected a lot of stuff on your travels, auntie Saya. I can't make heads or tails out of most of it. It's like you picked up a souvenir for every place you decided to stop over. Even the johns."

Saya shrugs. "I guess… I wanted to remember all of it, even when it wouldn't be the same. I told you before; when I was younger, my dream was to travel the world. Now that I'd finally gotten the chance to do so, I didn't want to forget how lucky I was."

"We understand," Alecto murmurs. "Really, a lot of things here make for fodder of a rollicking good tale. Haji never used to tell us much, besides a basic outline. Typical Haji."

"Typical guy, in general," Meg smirks. "They really can't tell a good story. Not without all the juicy details, at least."

" _Juicy_ _details_?" Saya crooks a brow. "Exactly what did the two of you ask him?"

The twins exchange sly looks and begin to giggle. "Nothing," muffles Meg, "Except… maybe about that shiny leather costume in one of the trunks."

Alecto grins. "Y'know, the one that comes with the Go-Go boots?"

"And the cute little whip?"

Saya's face flushes red. "Did you go through _all_ my things?"

Meg covers her mouth to smother laughter. "You mean your trunkful of toys? _No_."

"I am _outraged_!"

"Guess you would be. Although your face isn't _half_ as red as Haji's was, the first time we asked him about it. He looked like he was going to spontaneously combust on the spot."

Saya, torn between annoyance and hilarity, struggles to balance this image of Haji in her mind. She cannot help the laughter that spangles from between her lips.

But, just as abruptly, it stops.

_Ohgod…_

_Haji._

This time, the tears that spring into her eyes are beyond her control. Saya winces, raising a hand to wipe them off, but they are already spilling down her face. The tightly-reigned control she has kept on herself since the Awakening has finally unraveled, allowing her deep grief and confusion to pour forth.

The twins are startled by her tears, but it takes them less than a second to understand why and where they stem from. As Saya cries soundlessly, soblessly, they step closer to her, wrapping their arms around her from either side. A Saya sandwich, or so Kai used to call it, whenever he'd see her nieces embracing her.

"Don't worry, aunt Saya," Meg whispers gently. "We'll get him back."

"I know," Saya chokes. "It's just… I don't even know if he's still alive. And if he is, I can't… I can't _feel_ him anywhere. I just can't."

"That doesn't mean he's gone," Alecto interposes. "It just means, wherever he is, he's really well-sealed. And we know Haji would never leave you. In any sense of the word. He didn't then, and he won't now."

"I know," Saya whispers. "That's what I keep telling myself. Right now, all I know is, I have to find him, and I have to get him back. No matter what it takes. Nothing's going to be right in my life, unless he's here again."


	4. Interlude: Equilibrium Askew

_Interlude: Equilibrium Askew_

The first time they made love, Saya had felt as though the sensation, the sheer indescribable rawness of it, would drive her insane. Despite all her years spent alive, embroiled in warfare, zinging with bloodlust and adrenaline, she had never once experienced something with such an overwhelming totality of her senses.

Starry sky above her and below her, air rushing around her from all sides, cooling sweat across fevered flesh. Pulse hammering against her temples, her chest, as she sucked in gasp after gasp of futile air, hands clutching helplessly at his shoulders, his hair. Wind whipping about her face, the sound of her own voice a breathless keening mewl she could neither recognize nor control.

Exhilaratingly, searingly primal, it had made even her murderous spree in Vietnam pale to bland shades.

Vietnam was the only time she could connect to her most base instincts, to the time where she had ceased to ponder, to rationalize, to think at all. The only time where, despite all the blood she had spilled, the harrowing madness she had evoked, she had been entirely, thoughtlessly free.

In away, Vietnam, for all its repercussions, had been the closest she had ever come to experiencing what death felt like.

Death, the way she had wanted after she had succeeded in killing Diva. The desertion of all remorse, of the burden of duty, the shame of all the blood that steeped her hands. An absolute peace that not even her intermittent spells of sleep could grant her; this rich undefined sensation, not of nothingness, but of brimming _aliveness_.

It had stunned her to discover that she'd carried the capacity to experience it, within herself, with _him_ , all along.

Their 'couple' position had been fairly new, the first time it happened. Saya and Haji's initial upbringing at the Zoo, while so straitlaced compared to the present times, was firmly-entrenched in both their natures. Despite the intensity of what simmered between them, they had agreed to keep a decorous pace to this new and wonderful affair, to take things piece by piece.

Rashness had begotten Saya only grief in the past. She was as aware as Haji that a root factor to her hesitation was fear that if she let herself go, lost herself too completely, she would only be condemning herself and anyone around her to a gateway of No Return.

" _Saya, it's not the same thing_ ," Alecto remarked, the first time she had intuited Saya's reluctance. " _You're not the same person, anymore_."

" _I know_ ," Saya said. " _I just…_ "

" _Come on_. _This is your chance to finally make up for lost time. Do all the things you never got to during the war._ "

Meg smirked, adding, " _Emphasis on the 'Do' part_."

Saya blushed and hastily changed the subject. But inside, she hadn't known what to say to that.

Luckily, fate had stepped in once again to make the decision for her.

An opera performance had been hosted out in town. Very posh, very exclusive. Kai had managed to get them all tickets; he despised opera, but the twins were wild about it (a trait inherited from their late mother, Saya often speculated). Ravishing in dueling silk gowns of ultramarine and crimson, Alecto and Meg had lent Saya one of their more sedate dresses, more out of Saya's own insistence than their protests that she would look equally stunning in something racier.

" _No one really covers up this much anymore_ ," Meg told Saya. " _Exhibitionism's stopped being embarrassing. Nowadays, skin is in._ "

" _Maybe_ ," Saya amended. " _But where I was raised, a long time ago, the mystery was half the beauty. In anything._ "

Meg giggled. " _Then wear a blindfold if you like mystery so much._ _Me, I like to keep things straightforward. Or at least, near transparent."_

" _Meg_!"

" _Hey. If you've got it, flaunt it._ "

But Saya's choice had proved to bear enhanced results. That night, among the garish colors and gaudy jewelry, the too-brassy expanses of flesh and form, her pale pink dress, like a white rose imbued with blushes, stood out in delicate contrast to all the dyes around, making their full color seem crude in comparison.

And the way Haji's eyes had lingered on her, soft and admiring and worshipful, the way his mouth had curved just the slightest along the edges, had been reward enough for Saya.

They sat together in the darkened opera box, while the vivid red curtains had swept back across the stage, and the symphony had swelled to commencement. Watching the dancers flit across the gold-hued podium, the vibrating crescendo of the singer's voice, the scintillating caress of violins and cellos, Saya couldn't help being swept back to another time, to the final battle with Diva at the MET.

That night, fueled by adrenaline and determination, sullied with grief for Diva, for herself, for so much that had seemed irretrievable, when Haji had begged her to live on. Haloed in a soft gold light, just like the pinpricks that lined the stage before her now. A hand as cold and inflexible as steel, clasping hers with feather-light gentleness, eyes flowing with magnitudes of grief, of love and pleading.

He'd drawn her back from her narrow abyss of despair, of destruction, time and time again, and on that night, it had ripped her apart thinking she had lost him forever.

She clasped Haji's hand as she remembered it now. His long pale fingers intertwined with hers, velvety with calluses. Subtle knobs where the joints met, nails short and smooth as her fingers traced their almond shape. His thumb imparted an exquisite caress to the inside of her wrist, making her skin vibrate, making her shake.

In the murk of darkness, her eyes met his, music glittering like a cascade around the air, evoking fresh memories of heartbreaks and tears.

Saya wasn't sure, even years later, what that look had conveyed, but she knew that something had happened in that instant, something sultry and iridescent and mysterious.

And the next thing she remembered was being out on the rooftop with Haji. The cool touch of the night air on her skin, the stars a vast field above her, faint music from the opera still thrumming in her ears. She'd been able to hear the music long after Haji had unfurled sweeping black wings, gathering her in his arms, and her feet had left the hard concrete of the rooftop, her mind the ponderous foundation of reality.

She was positive he'd meant to take her home, to her room, to somewhere more comfortable. But soaring high above the rooftops, shielded by the moonless star-studded sky, the silvery wisps of clouds, it was as if she was floating in a cocoon. Her very own velvet snowglobe. The buildings were so far below, their glowing lights a tapestry of interwoven gold threads, radiant against a dark background.

Her lips found Haji's in the next instant, and then she was kissing him, kissing him as though at any moment he might be ripped away from her, as though at any moment she might vanish out of his arms, and suddenly it was as if neither of them could stop.

So high in the air, cut off from the world below, lent her an exhilarating freedom, and at the same time, a vivid clarity. At this altitude, the tinge of danger heightened all sensations, all emotions, exquisitely sharpening each taste and touch. Equilibrium askew, mind reeling as much from the sensory haze as from the dizzying rush of kisses without end, the dull roar of wind in her ears, sister to the pounding staccato of her pulse.

She still wasn't sure how the warm breathless blur progressed so fast from kissing to touching to… to _that_ … right there in the night sky. It felt as though her restraining bolt, and his, had finally snapped open, and all the yearning, the raw _need_ between them had collided headlong to mingle and burgeon and feed on each other.

His wings beating in powerful sweeps, cutting arcs across the sky, fanning her hair around her face as her mouth sought his, melted against his, again and again. Her dress loosened by his lean fingers, folds of pale satin fluttering tenuously around her quivering arms and legs. Her hands undoing buttons on his shirt, fumbling with the zips and buckles of his pants without accomplishment.

Undressing, slow, lingering deliberation, would come later. In a bed, in her room. At that moment, fully-clothed, unbalanced and suspended sky high, her entire body was vibrating, overheating, the tension at her center surrendering to boiling molten need.

She remembered her legs cinched tight around his waist, her hands gripping the fabric of his sleeves in claws. The noises curling from her throat between each breathless sucking kiss, his cool hands sliding everywhere, inciting them both out of self-control. _Please—please—now. Do it now_.

The first instant she felt him push inside her, filling her slowly, tears burst to her eyes—hot, anguished, brilliant. Her swollen mouth unfurled into a giddy 'O', liberating a sob that was part pain, part triumph. Haji's lips were on her throat, on her face, trembling, infinitely tender, sipping the tears away. She held him tightly as the sky around her, the city below her, melted and disappeared.

For the first time in her life, she was steeped purely in sensation, in pervasive enveloping _fullness_. This hard pillar of heat immersed in her, siphoning her entire body with electricity, sending her mind flickering and erupting in static and sparks like a piece of machinery on overload.

It was beyond her expectation, beyond her experience.

When she saw Haji's expression through her swimming vision, it reminded her, oddly, of the first time she'd given him her blood, made him her Chevalier. Pupils contracting to pinpricks in wide astonished eyes, face frozen, lips parted in speechless stupefaction. Then she'd watched his eyes droop, squeezing shut, his jaw tightening as he stifled a vibrating groan, and his forehead fell to press against the feverish column of her throat.

This night, like at the Zoo, she felt his flesh surge and twist against her grasping hands, sinews zinging with tension, as if to echo another chapter in their history, another means in which she had made him _hers_.

Only this time, she would never allow him to suffer for her sake again.

Haji's wings lost rhythm as she started moving against him. Gingerly at first, then with more purpose, her entire body pulsating, deliciously stretched and whole around his. A slow, quivering, grinding ride, in tandem with the jagged metronome of her heartbeat, breath straining in ragged gasps as though air was burning her mouth.

Haji's hands were trembling, gripping her tightly, lacing her skin with dull bruises that faded in seconds. Lips throttling her name like a miracle— _Saya… S-Saya_ —between pressing feverish and hungry along her collarbone, sucking hot and heavy on her breasts. She keened with each exquisite tug, her fingers scrabbling shakily at his shoulders, his hair, as he began to rock harder against her, deep dizzying strokes timed to her escalating gasps.

Stars blurring to darkness all around her. Strands of dark hair tangling around her fingers; breath ripping from her throat in semi-stifled shrieks. Pulse pounding, uncontrollable, ferocious, a sensation echoed sharper and sharper where she was wrapped around him, swallowing him deep into herself. Vertiginous— _ohgod yes_ —helpless— _more please more_ —mewls wrenching from her lips without volition or restraint, muffled only by his mouth against hers, trading splintered moans back and forth in the breathless, mindless crescendo of exodus.

The comedown hit them in a sudden sharp plunge, so abrupt Saya thought she was dying. The stars were rived with sparks as hollow air rushed through her ears, heart hammering so hard she thought it would burst. His name grating uncontrollably past her throat— _Haji, Haji_ —as all her twisting trembling limbs went rigid in the shattering instant her mind flew apart, leaving her quivering like electrified wire… then wrung to leaden paralysis.

She could feel Haji trembling violently against her, face buried in the curve of her neck and shoulder to muffle a soundless sob.

He lost control of his wings in that deadly instant; she felt them swoop like a deadweight through empty air before he regained his balance mid-sky. Wings flapping slowly, lethargically, righting them both in stages. Limp, shaking, she clung to Haji, dragging in air through her parted lips, relearning how to breathe. She felt the cool wind reaffirming itself against her skin, drying beads of sweat and residual tears. She heard the indolent thud of her own heartbeat, each muscle stretched and sore and sated, and she smiled and tightened her arms around him.

She wanted to tell him, _I love you,_ or _thank you_ , or, _I'm so glad you're here_ , but in that moment it seemed almost irrelevant.

Words were inconsequential in the face of this.

They weaved through the sky in a languid erratic pattern, looping, twisting; she might have been put in mind of an intoxicated falcon in midair, might have feared for her life and his, knowing the drop from this height would be fatal to both of them.

But she knew he would not let them fall.

He was here with her, and as long as she lived and breathed, she would never let them separate again.


	5. Argus

He calls the lizard Argus today.

Not out of personal preference, but because he changes the name every time he sees the creature, and because he is gradually running out of names to call it. Every appearance the lizard makes is a signal of another passing day. And with each passing day, the lizard has been a mélange of Greek and Roman deities—taken from a dense volume he and Saya once read to each other from Joel's library.

Despite the years that have passed, Haji still retains the names and histories of each god and goddess, his mind a steel trap that his captor is trying to corrode and pry apart.

Today, as yesterday and the day before, Argus halts a few spaces away from Haji. Eyes large and cold, an expressionless reptilian gaze that takes in Haji's motionless form chained to the wall. Arms spread out on either side, restrained by icy manacles, pinning him as though crucified. Legs dangling a few inches above the ground, his head drooping forward, matted tangles of long hair falling to conceal his gaunt face.

The wall behind him is stained rust with his own dried blood; the fabric of his clothes is stiff with it. So many times, he has been dragged from this cell, hauled to that garish white laboratory. He trembles involuntarily, remembering how he has been sliced apart, put back together, again and again, under cold scalpels and merciless hands.

Emotionless eyes, more chilling than Argus', trying to probe through all his layers, to pick him apart piece by bleeding piece.

 _So_ , he registers distantly. _This is how the Sif must have felt in Kerbed._

In this dank, concrete cell, he is sealed from all sense of time, from all color and light. The only shades he knows here are the black and gray of the cell, the white of the laboratory, and the red of his own blood.

And the green lizard, titled today as Argus, and yesterday as Hermes.

Every day, the lizard crawls out from a chink in the wall. It spends an indeterminate amount of time peering at Haji. Motionless, noiseless, yet seeming to mock Haji with the knowledge that he is a prisoner here, while the lizard can move to go at any time and has instead chosen not to.

Haji thinks the creature hates him.

The feeling is more than mutual.

On cue, he hears the distant creak of a metal door opening. Footsteps shuffling toward his cell. From the striped bars before him, Haji sees a figure approach. He can smell the thrumming pulsation of blood. He has not fed for so long. His body feels as though it is gnawing at itself. The yearning is incredible; it suffuses his every thought, his every breath.

But far stronger than that yearning, boils his desire to escape this place, to return to _her_.

He has bided decades without complaint, content in the knowledge that he will be able to see her, to touch her, at the moment of her Awakening. Worse, he knows in his marrow that the Awakening has happened, and it curdles his soul to consider that he has been deprived of his always too-brief time with her, be it another hour or second.

She is, as he has always known, his reason for being.

Here, in this airless tomb, locked away from her presence, he truly understands what it means to feel despair.

A lock jams into his cell door. The door groans open. Immediately, Argus leaps into motion, swooping past Haji to disappear back into its chink again.

"And how is our special guest doing?" the familiar voice sneers. "The same as always, no doubt."

Haji keeps his eyes pinned to the floor. He does not answer.

"You know, considering how _strenuous_ our tests on you have been, I'm amazed you've still found the will to carry on. You truly are the personification of stubborn."

_And you, in turn, personify the insane…_

"You do realize, of course, that had we wished it, we could have killed you at any time. Decapitated you, skewered out your heart, bled you to death. Or, for more dramatic intents, fed you Diva's blood. But there is a reason you have been kept alive. Would you like me to tell you what it is?"

_It may astound you how little I care…_

"Your presence here is only tolerated because, as long as you live, _Saya_ will come to us. She has awakened very recently, you know."

The mention of _her_ name, spat like acid and bile from his captor's lips, jerks Haji's head up. His face, lean and half-starved, is stony, but his eyes flicker with rage.

His captor smiles disdainfully. "Of course. What else would get a reaction out of you, but _that_? All these years, Haji, and you haven't changed. Perhaps you're the closest anyone can come to immortality. Other Chevaliers alter in personality, in speech and temperament. As the years pass, they change, they compromise, they adapt. But you—you've stayed the same throughout. That I can say for a fact. I don't know whether its admirable, or really just pathetic."

Haji makes no reply.

"But yes, Saya has awakened. Her first questions, predictably, were about the whereabouts of her pet. If we play this just right, she will come to us, very soon. And she will get what is coming to her."

Haji's eyes narrow into glittering slits. His fingers twitch, straining against the manacles.

His captor sneers at the feeble but persistent show of life. "Don't be so impatient, Haji. Your turn will come soon enough. Although I suppose I can confide in you, assume you too possess a capacity for suffering. But perhaps, unlike myself, you enjoy it. Perhaps the more pain Saya makes you slog through, the more agony she inflicts on you, thrills you? Perhaps you need it?"

Haji's knuckles itch to connect with the speaker.

_Not really. But at the moment, I know what your face needs…_

"You see, Haji, I hold no grudge against you personally. In a way, I pity you. Both of us, you see, dedicated our lives to a cause, to a purpose. You could even say, to the same purpose. To Saya. Your reasons were different from mine, of course. So were your circumstances. But Saya brought upon me, upon my life, nothing but agony and torment. She deserved, after completing her mission, to die. Instead, at _your_ behest, she decided to live. To continue to sully the world with her _sickening_ , _undeserving_ presence."

The boiling venom of each word gives Haji pause, as much as the deranged glow of rage, of hatred, in his captor's eyes.

He has never imagined, despite all the grotesque incidents he has undergone and all the unsound minds he had ever encountered, that he would ever behold a face of such pure wrath, of such barely-reigned loathing.

"That," his captor adds, "is perhaps what I find most unforgivable. That after everything you know about Saya, after everything she did to you, to the people around us all, you would urge her to live on. Not just live on, but _thrive_. Can you imagine what it is like, knowing your whole existence has been decimated—not just decimated, but _wiped out_ so no one can know of your suffering? So no one can mourn for you? And while you rot in despair, that _filth_ , that _Saya_ , dances in sunlight, lives and breathes air that should be _yours_?"

 _She deserves to live,_ Haji thinks furiously _. You are so wrapped up in your hatred, you cannot imagine how much she suffered…_

_She deserves to be happy._

His thoughts appear transparent to his captor. Haji watches the other man's lips curl with contempt. "You, Haji, you are perhaps not so different from myself. We both served Saya, in our own ways, and we both were hurt perhaps far more than we were rewarded. But now, I have a new purpose, although ironically, it too centers on Saya. Except now, I live not to serve her, but to _kill_ her."

Haji's hands clench into fists. If he were not so weak, if he had strength remaining, he would burst away from these despised manacles, lunge at the speaker and sever him limb from limb. But he cannot, and the knowledge is more infuriating, more galling, than the awareness of how he was captured, of how, after years spent in repose, he has grown so rusty at keeping his guard, at defending himself.

Who would have imagined that there would be such dire consequences to being happy?

Who would have imagined that disaster could strike him when he had just begun to believe he was now free of it?

"Well, Haji, there you have it. My motivations to live, which will effectively destroy your own. And, as always, they center on Saya. On Saya, and on all the misery she has brought me. First by releasing Diva into the world, and then by proving herself to be no less callous, no less barbaric than her sister herself. Therefore, it should be fitting that she will die from her sister's blood. You may call it a cosmic justice, if you will."

Saying so, his captor snaps pale fingers.

Immediately, men in labcoats enter the cell, flanked by armed guards. Haji knows what they are here for. He knows where they will take him. To the cold white lab with the metal tables, to the white sheets that will soon be stained with his own blood.

"Personally, I have no interest in knowing what makes you tick," his captor remarks, as the newcomers close in on Haji. "But I need the payment received from securing these men their very own Chevalier guinea pig. I need it to lure Saya here. So, in a way, you can say that you will be as much the cause of her demise as I intend to be."

Haji's skin prickles with fear and rage. In his peripheral vision, he sees a needle looming close, moving to pierce his carotid artery, to sedate him and allow him to be hauled motionless into the lab.

His final thought before the pinprick breaks skin is:

_Saya…_

_Please, for your sake. Keep away from here …_

* * *

Saya's eyes snap open.

She sits up straight in bed, looking around the darkened room. The surroundings are unfamiliar for a moment; then she recalls where she is. Meg and Alecto's apartment. Their spare bedroom. The bedsheets are heavy and knotted around her legs; Saya kicks them off and rises to her feet. She cannot sleep anymore. Her entire body is tense, staticky, buzzing with unease.

Sleep offers her no respite. Her dreams are a chaos of flashbacks, all the miserable days and nights during the war, when Kai was alive, as were David, and Lewis, and Julia. Dad and Riku. The blood, the screaming and tears. Her fear, her mounting unreality at her own origins, her self-loathing and her determination to end the fight.

It has been years since she has recalled that turbulent time.

More recently, especially before her last Long Sleep, her dreams were so whimsical, so peaceful. Haji's cool breath sawing in soft currents across the back of her neck, the steady weight of his arms around her, acted as a padlock that kept out all the turmoil, holding the desperation at bay. But without him, the lock has shattered, gates of perdition flying open, and it is as though all her fears are surging anew.

_Haji…_

_How am I going to do this without you?_

Shuddering, she paces across the narrow space of the room. The apartment is silent. Both the twins have retired to their rooms, and are no doubt fast asleep. Tyler does not need sleep, but she has no doubt he will be in Meg's room; she does not want to go out to the kitchen and make a noise in case she rouses his attention. She does not want to talk to anyone right now.

Her eyes are drawn, despite the veil of darkness, to the trunks and boxes scattered all around. Her hands, guided by their own accord, reach out to open one of the trunks. She sifts gently through the cacophony of contents within: intricately painted snuffboxes, vividly-colored bottles, bits and pieces of clothing, hairbrushes and bracelets. She recalls their origins, their discoveries.

During her mission to kill Diva, she had put all vanity, all impulse to ornament herself aside. She had been too hardened by the purpose of her journey, too jaded and infused with remorse to care for such trivial things. But afterward, with Haji and her nieces, she had been free to recapture that lost era, to rediscover what it meant to be a normal girl.

A normal girl who liked to go shopping, to pick out nice clothes to match with her shoes and handbags. A normal girl who liked to dress up, to look pretty, for herself, for her boyfriend.

She had never imagined, after everything she had gone through, that something so mundane could be so wonderful.

" _These people around us are blessed_ ," she would often remark to Haji. " _They don't realize it most of the time, but they're truly lucky. They're so oblivious to everything that's happened. There's so much they'll never have to endure, to suffer. Their lives may not be perfect, but they're the closest things to perfection there are. Even if it's only because they're so ignorant to what's really going on._ "

" _Perhaps_ ," Haji had intoned quietly. " _But ignorance does not always assure happiness._ _Learning the truth has its own rewards._ "

" _I know. And we fought so hard to protect that truth. We lost so much to the cause_." She paused, then smiled wistfully. " _Maybe, in some way, we're even luckier than all these people are_."

" _Why is that_?"

" _Unlike them, we've seen the other side of the story. We know even better than they do, how precious_ _this life is. Maybe we have a greater right to finally enjoy it, not because we're ignorant of the truth, but because we_ aren't _. We have twice the incentive to live our lives._ "

Haji had smiled faintly, and drawn her into the circle of his arms. " _You may be right."_

Lips curving, glittering with mischief. _"Of course I am."_

" _Hmm."_ His expression, indulgent at first, then sobering, although the gentle light in his eyes remained. _" And I promise, as long as I am here, that I will give you a life worth living for_."

And he had. Her wonderful, unwavering Haji. He had been her support, her compass and her spine. Without him, she knows she would have crumbled long ago into aimlessness and despair.

Saya's own words from hours earlier come back to her.

_Nothing's going to be right in my life, unless he's here again_

And she knows nothing will. She has to find him, wherever he may be, and bring him back.

_Haji. Please hold on._

_I'm coming to get you._


	6. Interlude: Murphy's Closet

_Interlude: Murphy's Closet_

The sky was overcast with gray clouds. Rain fell in systematic droplets across the earth, darkening the pavements, glossing the leaves of trees. Standing beneath the umbrella Haji held for her, Saya peered with moist red eyes at Kai gravesite, in the ancient Miyagusuku tomb. Her adopted brother, determined and fiery and full of compassion, the condensed essence of summer and life.

Gone forever.

He had passed away, ten years into Saya's long Sleep. Before she had been taken to the tomb for her subsequent hibernation, both she and Kai had known, without words, that the next time she awoke, he would not be there. David and Julia and Lewis had already gone. Their children carried on the family names, but there was no escaping the knowledge that they too, would soon leave, when Saya next awoke.

She knew now, in a way she had never known before, the keenest pain that came with loving someone mortal, who could not follow after you.

" _Kai_ ," she whispered. " _I'm so sorry I couldn't be there. I wish I could have thanked you, bid you goodbye._ "

She had been told, by the twins, by everyone who remembered Kai, that he had lived a full and vibrant life. Like their father George, he had savored each day to the fullest, had never wasted a second of his existence without doing something worthwhile. He had been as vital to her as sunlight, as laughter. Her beloved brother, who had raised her nieces like his own daughters, who had fought so hard to keep his family safe and close, blood ties be damned.

" _It's so strange_ ," she murmured to Haji. " _We_ _both knew it would come to this, even though we never really talked about it. I was preparing for it ever since my sleep. But it still hurts so much."_ Tears burning her eyes, spilling down her face in a warm echo of the rain. _"I can't believe he's gone."_

" _Saya…_ " Haji drew a tentative arm around her, pulling her close. Saya squeezed her eyes shut, curling her fingers into his arm, letting the tears fall freely.

" _You and Meg and Alecto are the only family I have left now_ …" she said. " _It's scary, knowing one day, I might lose you too._ "

" _Saya_ …"

At the sound of her name, she raised her head. Haji gently brushed a tear from her cheek, gazing down at her with soft, intense eyes. A single tendril of dark hair hung over his brow.

" _Saya, I swore to you, before you went into your long sleep, that I would not leave your side._ _That will never change. And I promise, in any way I can, I will make sure you never shed another tear again._ "

Love and gratitude pulsed thick and hot through her, nearly as overwhelming as the grief. Her mouth curved tremulously, despite the tears that splashed from her eyes. Leaning up to him on tiptoe, her cold-warm lips pressing tenderly, lingeringly to his.

" _Thank you, Haji_."

She would never have imagined, even years later, just how true to his promise her life would be, just how much she would have to thank him for.

The presence of her two nieces was so refreshing for her, so comforting. Their endless banter, their closeness, their shared memories of Kai, weaved an unmistakable aura of _home_ whenever she was with them. It was rather like having two sisters. For the first time, Saya wondered if she and Diva would have found harmony, amicability together, had not Joel kept one sister cloistered as his prized gem, and the other isolated like a mangy animal.

But the moments where she pondered these things were few and far in between. There were places to travel, sights to see, and suddenly, it was as if a Murphy's closet had swept wide open, leaving her breathless and giddy with excitement and possibility. All the countries she visited with Haji and Alecto and Meg, the strange and wonderful things they had seen together.

She had never had the opportunity to savor anything during her lengthy journey to kill Diva. Her own guilt and self-absorption had tinged everything queasy and gray.

But now, it seemed as though the color had spilled back into everything, and she couldn't get enough of it.

Carnivals and skirls of music, deserts of smooth gold sand, pristine white beaches that looked like the covers of travel ads. Skyscrapers and shopping malls and galleries and theaters. And _food_ , so much of it, of all kinds and portions, in a palette of colors she could scarcely comprehend, with whimsical shapes and hard-to-pronounce names.

The whole world seemed to beckon to her, fresh and novel and exciting as to a child opening her eyes for the first time. And Meg and Alecto were there at the apex, beaming, ready to grab her hand and yank her in with them.

There were sunny days where she walked crowded streets holding Haji's hand tight in hers, licking spun sugar from her fingertips and grinning with Meg and Alecto at the street performers. Evenings spent splashing in pools, cutting waves and tossing back and forth taunts and laughter. Nights spent awake under a starry canopy, her head drooping indolently on Haji's smooth shoulder, the echo of his kisses and touches still shimmering through her bare skin, watching the sun break through the horizon.

The moments when she remembered Kai, remembered her human family, were weighted down with nostalgia, with grief. But it was a grief that was enlivening, comforting; the windfall of having known such people, of having been bolstered by such love and support.

" _I used to think I was unlucky, you know_ ," she once confessed to Haji. " _I used to think I would never be happy, because that kind of thing just wasn't meant for me._ " A smile bloomed across her lips, and she leaned close, pressing her cheek to his chest. " _I can't believe how wrong I was_."


	7. David

The building is dank, pungent with mildew and isolation.

Saya walks across the empty rooms, assessing the wreckage all around her. Blood staining the walls, faded and brown. Furniture shattered, left in forlorn shreds every which way. The site of the first Chiropteran attack, sealed off by authorities, accessible via Red Shield's numerous contacts.

It is here that Saya and the rest meet with their latest comrade in this latest battle. A descendant of David and Julia Silverstein, the most recent member to carry on the somber mantel of "David". This century's David is tall and well-built, with large broad hands and long dark hair drawn back in a ponytail. But Saya sees something of her long-dead comrade in his unsmiling chiseled face, in his intent blue eyes.

Also like his forefather, he is businesslike, to-the-point.

"Saya," he greets her, as if it is a hello. "I apologize for not being present for your Awakening. If I'd been there, I would have briefed you on the situation much earlier."

Saya shakes her head. "That's fine. But please. I need to know what's going on. How are these Chiropterans reappearing? And where is Haji?"

"We have received no contact from your Chevalier for five months now. The last reports of his whereabouts were in the factory in Berlin. We've tried to infiltrate the area, but the security makes it impossible. It's far too heavily-guarded."

"Exactly what kind of factory is this?"

"Externally, it supplies medical goods. But our scouts have managed to learn certain details about the building. One of which is that there is an area built underground, with a separate entrance and exit. And there are signs that the area is being used to conduct experiments on Chiropterans. Scientists have been seen entering the vicinity, leaving it, at odd hours. Its structure is similar, in fact, to the ancient Yanbaru facility you once infiltrated with my ancestor, the second David."

"Yanbaru…" Saya's voice is faint.

Memories flap and flail behind her eyes, serving her scoops of the darkened building in the leafy cacophony of the jungle, the smell of dust and fear, the sliding metal doors that held out ravening Chiropterans. The place where she had been forced to kill her father with her own blood, vivid red spewing across the floor and walls.

Then Alecto speaks. "Who exactly are these people? How did they get their hands on our mother's blood?"

David hesitates. When he speaks, his voice is lowered, confidential. "This is strictly need-to-know information. The scientists in the Berlin factory are the same ones who were scavenging through our Iceland facility. We've gathered enough details to learn that they're part of a private genetic engineering project. Well-funded, but shady. They've run several operations before, mostly in Asia and South America, but each time, the governments have shut them down because they veer toward less-than-ethical practices."

Tyler frowns. "And… what's the need-to-know part?"

"The Chiropterans created by these scientists. Their source is Diva's blood. And it seems that the scientists obtained this blood from within Red Shield itself."

Megaera's eyes widen. "What? You mean they stole it?"

"No. Decades ago, during the war, Diva's blood was taken from one of the old Cinq Fleshe labs. It was kept preserved in one of our high-security bases in France. To analyze it, to understand the behavior and lifestyle of the Chiropteran queens. The area was inaccessible to ordinary operatives."

"So you're saying someone from within the base _gave_ the blood to these scientists?" Saya interposes, unnerved.

"Worse. A faction of the staff has defected and joined these scientists. They're small in number, but each of them bears vital information on Chiropterans, on yourself and Diva's origins. They also have a deep knowledge of Red Shield's internal affairs. Outguessing them is going to be a challenge."

"And Haji?" Saya's pulse in beating hard and sharp against her temples. "What about him? Do you think he might be held hostage in that Berlin factory?"

David hesitates, seeming to taste his own words before speaking them. "There is a possibility. Our sources conclude that if Haji is indeed alive, it is for the basis of experimentation. Those scientists could have captured him in order to study a real live Chevalier. They've given the impression of being very interested in the biology of Chiropteran Queens and their descendants."

Saya's throat feels the thirst of the Sahara.

_Experiments…?_

_He might be sliced open and half-insane for all I know._

_My god, what could they be doing to him?_

Saya rejects the unbidden images, grotesque and chilling, that her imagination evokes. She shakes her head firmly, the mental impact of a door slammed shut and locked, and refocuses on David.

"This factory," she says. "Is there any way to get in?"

"It's difficult. Haji tried it, but he could not succeed."

"But you said the governments in other countries shut down these scientists' operations before," Tyler interjects. "Because of ethical issues. Well, what they're doing in that factory is far from legal too. And some of their Chiropteran experiments have wound up loose in the city. Killing a lot of people. I'm sure the government there won't take it any better."

"That's actually one of the questions we've been asking ourselves," interjects David. "Considering the history these scientists have, and the security around the factory, a mistake like that seems unlikely. You would think they'd be more careful with the Chiropterans, prevent them from escaping at any cost. But if anything, since your Awakening, the reports of Chiropteran attacks have been rising."

"You're right," Alecto intones. "It's much too incongruous."

Saya's eyes narrow. "Either too incongruous, or not at all, actually."

Everyone turns to stare at her.

"What do you mean?" David asks.

"Think about it. These scientists have inside information from Red Shield. They know about my history, about Diva's. About Meg and Alecto. They probably know I'm awake, that the twins are with me. Do you think they might be trying to get our attention?"

"By setting Chiropterans out in the city?" David's eyebrow crooks, bemused and skeptical.

"It's been known to happen before. And you just mentioned that these scientists were interested in Chiropteran Queens. Which the three of us are. There's a chance someone is trying to lure us there."

David inclines his head, and raises the other brow, but mostly to level them out. He seems contemplative, considering. "You might have a point."

"So… what then?" Meg asks, glancing from David to Saya. "We're just going to barge in there and ask them to give Haji back? Even though we know it's a trap? Like, with a twenty-foot neon sign attached?"

Saya purses her lips. "It's something the earlier David used to say, back in the days of the war."

"What?"

"It doesn't matter if it's a trap. We still have to go."

Tyler cringes. "Yeah? I hope that wasn't the motto of his life. Otherwise I'm amazed the guy lived so long."

The current David shoots Tyler a sharp look, and then turns to Saya. "Perhaps so. But you're going to need back-up. Otherwise you'd never make it out of the factory alive without running into trouble."

"That's fine," Saya remarks, with a faint tinge of bitterness. "Trouble is something I have a long and funny history with."

* * *

Pure white. Closed off on all four sides, like the inside of a box. The floor is checked, like the surface of a chessboard. Black, then white, then black. Then white again. The room is small, stifling cold. An airless refrigerator.

Haji sees a row of glass test tubes. Slithers of fluid in each one. They gleam in the white light. They look like they might feel cold. Like glossy ice. On a screen, a cold gray needle. A magnification of blood cells. Flattened floating mushrooms. Their color is red. The only color in the whiteness of the room. The screen shows the needle piercing into a blood cell.

A sliver of cold gray penetrating the warm round red.

Large needles are fastened into Haji's skin in this lab. Their tiny metal points stick to his flesh like licks of ice. Each one focusing a sharp, tear-stinging dot of pain. Exerting pressure. He feels them drawing out his blood.

His eyes water. Tears hot, burning sharp in the coldness. Slithers of warm red blood suspended in glossy cold tubes.

A screen with a mysterious graph. A dull drone, flickering images. Numeric and alphabets. Spectrums and charts.

Cold gray needles in his hands. Bunched across his wrists like icicles. Penetrating cold and sharp. Flowing with sparks, filling his skin with cold daggers of pain. His body tightens, his muscles spasm. The _pain_.

So cold.

Electricity is a cold sensation. Who knew? It feels so hot; it burns so sharp, so acute, that it is unbearably cold. Does that make sense?

It must, because it does.

White figures loom around his shuddering body. Standing at intervals on the chessboard floor. Black, then white, then black. They look like chess pawns. Their faces are hidden by reflective black visors. They have no emotion, no temperature. They are as cold as the room. Haji feels their silent impartial malice, their cruel intent indifference.

At the end of the room, a rectangular black screen. A mirror? A window. He sees hazy images through it. Blurry, reflecting the milky haze of his cold white room.

Needles everywhere. Cold. More cold than he can stand. Pain. So much pain. He spasms with it, jerking back, left, right. The white figures watch him, motionless. He sees his soundless agony reflecting off their black visors. They taunt him with their stillness, their impassivity.

He wants to scream at them, tell them, _Stop, stop it_.

But he cannot move.

Clouds of deep red in more gleaming glass tubes. Screens and graphs flickering. Voices somewhere. From the white figures? No? Yes? He does not know. A screaming coming from somewhere. Shrill and deranged and endless.

Is it his own?

A dull hum. Something burns, burns, and hurts. Voices, screaming, needles, humming, pain. And cold, so much cold.

He has felt cold before. For a very long time. Ever since becoming Saya's Chevalier, his body temperature has plummeted to tepid volumes. On permanent _Thermafrost_ , as Meg and Alecto often remarked in the early days, whenever tugging at his hands to drag him off with Saya to a visit a new place. Saya never used to mind that he had such a minimal body heat. Indeed, in hot climates, she enjoyed the way his hands would feel on her sweaty brow, on the back of her delicate sunburnt neck.

" _Much better than an ice pack_ ," she would murmur, smiling at him. " _And, best of all, with an added aesthetic element_."

Haji, in turn, had always relished how warm she was. Everything about her, around her, seemed to hum, to ripple with an intoxicating heat. It was something he could never explain to her, how that radiant warmth drew him to her like a filling to a magnet. He enjoyed how she felt against him when she was asleep, especially just after they had made love. Her usual scent of flowery shampoo and soap and something inherently balmy and _Saya,_ tinged with a spicy aroma of drying sweat. Limbs slack and tangled with his, subsuming his own body with heat, sharing so unstintingly.

He never felt cold when he was with her.

The chill returned only when he was away from her presence, separated from her during her long sleep.

But this, this is _cold_ , cold in a way no human language can grasp. He imagines, if he ever crystallizes, this is what his body would feel like, the leaden overwhelming numbness. It might have swamped his entirely, a long time before, if not for the flickering heat that pulses through his chest at every silent invocation of her name.

_Saya…_

_Saya…_

* * *

Saya stiffens, and glances behind her.

For a moment, it feels as though she has heard a voice whispering her name, right against her ear.

 _His_ voice.

She gives herself a mental shake, and turns away. She cannot afford to languish in anxiety, in loneliness. For _his_ sake, she will be strong. She will allow herself the luxury of tears only when she is beside him again. Tears of joy, not of grief. This sere-throated agony is a weakness to her with every passing hour; she wants it gone.

Her eyes travel around the pictures lining the walls at Meg and Alecto's apartment. Photographs of different places the girls have traveled, separately and together. Landmarks from a variety of continents, Meg posing exuberantly and confidently in each one, Alecto more reserved, save for her soft knowing smile. In some pictures, they are alone; in others, surrounded by old comrades, friends, family.

Saya even sees ancient photographs of Kai, of Lewis and Julia, when they were all alive.

They pose before Omoro in one photo; the twins are barely into their teens, petite slips of girls clutching at Kai, then in his late thirties, broad-shouldered and tanned. David and Julia stand beside them, arm in arm; David wears a garish blue Hawaiian shirt with flowers that seem to laugh on the fabric; his eyes are bright as though he is on the verge of laughing himself. Julia's face is glowy, her hair falling in her eyes; Saya sees the glint of the wedding ring on her finger, where her hand rests on David's arm. Lewis is beside them, vast and jolly, smiling his broad, infectious grin as he gives a thumbs-up.

A wistful smile tugs at Saya's lips. Her old comrades, her safety net during the war, attenuating her mental burdens with their own resilience and grit. They had the will to carry on, to fight with her and back her up, with a deeply _human_ buoyancy that she found herself imbibing even when she tried not to.

Even when all she wanted to do was close her eyes and sleep forever.

She hears faint footsteps behind her, followed by the heady aroma of coffee. Tyler appears at her shoulder, bearing a steaming mug.

"You look… tired," he says, eyes averted. "Thought you could use an extra caffeine boost."

"Thank you." She accepts the brimming mug from him, holds it between numb palms for a moment before she blows and takes a sip.

Tyler's curious eyes track past her, taking in the assortment of photographs she has been studying. He smiles softly. The action brings out the dimples in his cheeks, makes him seem much younger than he actually is. "So this was your old gang, huh?"

"Yes. Most of them."

He nods thoughtfully. "Meg used to tell me about them all. About growing up in Okinawa, her old school there, the places she and Alecto liked to eat. About the time you awoke, and when they first met Haji…" He tilts his head to one side. "She and Alecto really look up to you, you know that?"

Saya purses her lips, but does not know what to say.

"When I first met Meg, it was all she ever talked about. My foster parents were part of Red Shield, so you were a hot topic of discussion with them too." He slips his hands into his pockets and looks past her. "When I was young, it used to make me feel left out. Isolated. My adopted folks' parents had seen you with their own eyes. They'd experienced the repercussions of the war. They knew what it was all about, and they made sure to tell their kids all about it. But as for me… I'd never seen a real live chiropteran before. I didn't know how to connect any of it with my own life. It stayed that way even when I grew up. You'd think, being raised by Red Shield, I'd feel more interested in it, but I wasn't. I should've been, in theory, but some things can't be helped."

"So… why did you get involved with Meg then?" Saya asks. She is not trying to be rude, she is both genuinely curious, and eager for any distraction that will take her fear-induced thoughts off Haji.

Tyler hesitates, then smiles again. "I wasn't interested in Meg because of what she was, to be honest. Her being a Chiropteran didn't matter. Don't get me wrong—I hadn't gone into denial about it. But it wasn't an issue for me either. I was with her because I liked her. To me… she was just _Meg_."

"And what about when you were made a Chevalier? Did it… upset you in any way?"

"Upset me? No. It was the opposite."

"What do you mean?"

"It used to scare me sometimes, the idea that Meg and Alecto weren't human. Not in the usual sense, but in the sense that I'd never be able to stay with them as long as I wanted to. Because I was human, and somewhere along the line, it would pull me up short. And I didn't want to be deprived of anything with Meg. I can't think of a time I was happier than when I met her."

Saya dares a soft smile. Tyler's eyes are aglow. Something about his rueful expression makes her think of Kai, that day before the MET battle. Seated with him on the bench, shaded by trees and dappled with shifting spots of sunlight. Where Kai had urged her to live on, even when she hadn't wanted to believe she could, when he had smiled upon hearing her say _Nankurunaisa_.

"After Meg made me her Chevalier, I got my wish," Tyler adds. "Not just that, but the transformation completely changed me. Inside out. For the first time… I understood what it meant, to be part of a unit. To be part of a family. And not just because of blood. My foster parents were good people, but I never really felt like I belonged with them. I tried to, but it didn't happen. But here… it's not like that at all. I feel like I have a purpose with her and Allie. To take care of them. It's like I've found home."

"I…I see."

Tyler pauses then, and glances at her with a sheepish grin. "Sorry. Didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. Meg says I talk too damn much."

"It's all right."

_Right now, I really need the distraction…_

Her eyes flit past Tyler, to the photographs at the wall again. One of them gives her pause. A snapshot of a dark-haired man and woman, holding a boy with Tyler's sun-dappled hair. She points impulsively. "Are those your parents?"

"Were," Tyler corrects mildly. "Dad died last year, and mom passed away about ten months after him. They were both part of Red Shield's infantry. Guns were their specialty. Their own parents were the same way. In fact, their earliest ancestors were part of the Red Shield squad in Vietnam. That place where…"

 _Where I went insane and mutilated and slaughtered a hundred people in one night,_ Saya mentally finishes for him.

Unbidden, her lips press together; her hands knot into vibrating fists around the warm mug of coffee.

Tyler's expression softens with something like remorse. "I'm sorry. I've been told stories of what happened that night. Didn't mean to remind you. Although I honestly don't believe you were to blame for it."

_Yes, but how can you know? You weren't there. You don't know what I…_

"I can't speak from firsthand knowledge, but I've heard so much about all you've gone through," Tyler adds. Not reading her thoughts, merely continuing the conversation. "There's a lot you've had to suffer, to get through. You shouldn't be so hard on yourself. And… after meeting you face to face, I really think the twins were right about you."

"Right about me?" Saya frowns. "What do you mean?"

"That you deserve to be happy. Because you don't exactly look like you had an excess supply all your life. And I want you to know, I'll all do what I can, to help you and the twins get Haji back. This is me talking, not just the part that's Meg's Chevalier."

Saya is speechless, left mute by the quiet sincerity of the words, by the obvious dedication in this young man's eyes. To her nieces, to her. His new family by blood. Despite not knowing her, despite having just met her, he is willing to search for Haji with her, to help her with this problem. Not out of obligation, not because he owes it to Meg, but because it is something he wants to do.

That kind of compulsion is so rare. This, if nothing else, Saya has learnt from all her years spent alive. It stuns her that, despite everything, she still manages to cross paths with people who possess this precious trait.

Perhaps it is a sign for her, even in her bleakest hours. To look for light in hidden corners, to never lose hope.

She smiles at Tyler, a gentle, unguarded smile, an echo of the ones she used to contain in her earliest years.

"Thank you."


	8. Interlude: Viennese Waltz

_Interlude: Viennese Waltz_

Her first time in a nightclub had been surreal.

Black speakers as high as the roof, as wide as the wall, thumping like massive mechanical hearts. Echoing bass, pulsating across the ground, the furniture, the very air around her. Making her blood pound in answer, making her want to go out and _move_. Distorted lights throwing an otherworldly glow on everything. Blue and purple and green, suffusing her vision with an ethereal underwater tinge. The men and women around her, whirling and undulating to the strange music, clad in the glittering, skin-flashing, limb-molding, that left very little to the imagination.

Meg and Alecto, dressed in matching tight black outfits, grinned and led her deeper through the crowd. Saya's own dress, a deep red the color of blooming roses in spring, was nonetheless simple, and made her feel strangely out of place in the cacophony of sparkle and skin and sweat.

" _It's not you_ ," Alecto assured her, shouting to be heard over the roaring music. " _It's just because you're not used to this kind of place. Just relax and loosen up. Enjoy yourself."_

" _At least, as much as you can, in the circumstances,"_ Meg added with a chuckle, motioning behind Saya.

Saya felt Haji close behind her. She turned to hazard a glance at his face and very nearly chuckled herself.

Haji should have looked so incongruous here, a silent black shadow set against the flashing lights and unreal chaos. However, Saya had realized long ago that Haji never seemed incongruous anywhere. He had a way of molding himself to his surroundings, not with any conscious effort, but with a careless ease that came to him almost as naturally as breathing did to her.

Conversely, she could see how straight his shoulders were, how impassive his face was. The underlying tension about his frame contradicted the cool façade of his indifference. She should have guessed he wouldn't enjoy being here, so crowded and stifling. Haji had always possessed a solitary, uncomplicated nature; he would much rather have been somewhere quiet and private with just her, instead of embedded within this intrusive maelstrom.

She felt Meg tap her shoulder, leaning in to be audible. " _Want to get a drink, Saya_?"

She hesitated, then shook her head. " _No thanks. We'll just watch you two_."

" _Oh come on! Have a Screwdriver, if nothing else!_ "

" _A what_?"

Meg sighed. " _Never mind. One of these days, remind us to take you to a bar_."

Alecto chuckled. " _Better not. Remember, they still card us. Everyone thinks we're underage_."

" _Oh right. God, immortality blows sometimes_."

A subtle wave to Saya, and the two girls weaved away through the crowd, already gliding in half-dancing motions. Saya watched them vanish in the sporadic brightness of the dancefloor, then turned to look at Haji, who had retreated to a leather couch at the corner of the wall, out of the paths of rushing clubbers, their scents harsh with sweat and alcohol and too much perfume. Sighing, she clasped her hands before her and sidled up to Haji, settling at his side.

" _I'm sorry_ ," she said, speaking in normal tones, with her mouth very close to his ear. " _I had a feeling you wouldn't like it over here. But the girls insisted I bring you._ "

" _It's fine_ ," Haji intoned, and his catlike eyes slanted to meet hers. " _Do you like it here_?"

Saya paused, then shook her head. A pout tugged at her lip. " _Not very much_ ," she replied honestly. " _It's too noisy_. _And there are so many people around. It makes me feel almost claustrophobic."_

She glanced back at the crowded floor, and caught a split-second glance of Meg and Alecto. Swaying gracefully to the beat, long hair flying about their shoulders, limbs pale and slender against the contrasting black dresses. Their movements were so much smoother, so much freer than those of the people around them. Chiropteran bloodlines translated into an enhancement of elegance and motion, not just of strength and age.

They reminded her of pedigreed roses swaying in wind, amid a wild contorting tangle of thorns. She smiled with pride and wistfulness.

" _I can't believe how much they've grown_ ," she remarked to Haji. " _Sure, some of their… habits would drive anyone up the wall, but they're really settled into their lives, into what they are. They're confident in a way I never really was. It makes me happy, knowing that they're living normal lives. Or, at least as normal as it can get."_

Haji inclined his head, but did not answer. She could feel his eyes on her, assessing, thoughtful. She observed how he grew doubly vigilant, whenever he sensed her rolling into herself, falling into a silent thought-process. Experience had shown both of them that no good came when Saya sank into the bitter vault of her mind.

Self-analysis and contemplation often resulted in sadness on her part, and, by extension, on his.

Saya gave herself a mental shake, refusing to fall prey to the pattern, regardless of how the memories still nipped at her. Reaching out, she took Haji's hand, lacing their fingers together, and gently squeezed. Her gaze sought his through the strobing lights. " _Haji, do you want to dance_?"

Haji's brow arched imperceptibly. " _Saya, that_ —" a smooth dip of his chin toward the frenzied dance-floor, "— _is not dancing_."

She smiled at the subtle criticism. " _I know what you mean. As the years go by, dancing's really degenerated. Do you remember all the lessons we used to receive at the Zoo? Joel hired that harridan of an instructor to teach us the Viennese waltz, and she made you so nervous you used to keep stepping on my toes_."

Haji's lips curved faintly. " _I remember. Foot parallelism wasn't my forte_."

" _Just like letting_ you _take the lead wasn't_ mine _._ _At one point, you were trying so hard to steer me around, it felt like we were wrestling._ _The instructor said we made a mockery of everything the waltz stood for."_

" _True._ _She also said I was a gauche fumbling dunce who would never know a moment's grace in my life."_

Saya covered her mouth to smother laughter. _"Oh yes. That. But you picked up each technique very quickly, to your credit. You'd been taught dance since you were very young, weren't you?"_

" _It wasn't taught in lessons. It was taught as an advantage for making money in practical life_."

She chuckled. " _Well in a sense, the fencing I taught you was an even greater advantage_. _At least for_ our _practical lives._ " Leaning close, her lips almost brushing his cheek. " _Do you remember the last party Joel attended during the summer? All the days I spent, agonizing over the trimmings of my dresses, my hairdos. I sent back five dressmakers in one week, their creations rejected."_

" _Yes, I remember. The last with a shoe flying after him."_ Haji tilted his head, just barely smirking _. "It was interesting to watch. Although Joel was anything but amused."_

" _I told you. That idiot kept insisting I should select something in green. With a crinoline—and_ everyone _knew they were out of fashion. I wanted a red dress, with pretty catches across the bodice, and bows swagged on the shoulder and waist. Everything had to be just perfect, otherwise I'd never dream of wearing it._ _But you looked so_ confounded _the first time you saw the servants ironing my new dress. You told me it looked like a Russian circus tent."_

Haji's eyes met hers, glowing with a fond faraway light. " _You did not take that too well, as I recall_."

" _Yes. I spent the whole evening in a terrible mood._ _And I took it out on the maids who were doing my hair—practically drove one of them to tears. I was such an impossible brat."_ She sighed ruefully. _"But you know what? When they finally brought my dress in, I looked at it up close and thought, 'Haji had a point. It really does look like a circus tent'."_

She laughed, and Haji gave an imperceptible smile _._ " _The maids took almost three hours getting me into that thing,"_ she recalled. _"By the time they were done, I just wanted to collapse in bed."_

" _I remember. I was waiting downstairs the entire time, ready to take you to the carriage. I kept wondering what was taking you so long_."

Saya smiled mischievously. " _Is that all you were wondering_?"

Haji averted his eyes with a slight smile. Saya giggled, knowing she had caught him out.

" _I still remember how you looked when I came downstairs, though_ ," she drawled. " _You didn't say a single word about circus tents the entire evening after_."

Haji's hand came up, thumb brushing the curve of her cheek with a feathery softness. " _By itself, the dress looked ridiculous. But on you… it was anything but_."

Saya's cheeks warmed, and she smiled shyly and looked away. Amazing, after all the years she had spent in his company, enduring multitudes of hardship and torment, he could still make her blush like the schoolgirl she'd been when he'd met her in Okinawa.

Her eyes traveled back to the glinting, gyrating swarm across the dancefloor. " _It's funny._ _Before you came to live with me at the Zoo, the waltz was considered improper, because the man would be holding the woman in a half-embrace. But_ this _… this is so far beyond that. It's almost like vertical_ …"

She stopped then, and bit her lip, glancing back at her silent companion. He was looking at her curiously, waiting for her to finish her sentence.

Instead, Saya's hand came up to grasp his, tugging gently. " _Haji, let's dance_."

" _But Saya_ …"

" _Just one song. To see what it feels like_."

Haji hesitated for only a split-second, but Saya knew he wouldn't refuse her. He seldom did, unless it was something potentially harmful to her. Acquiescing, he rose to his feet, allowing her to draw him deep into the pounding vortex of the dancefloor.

The first thing that struck Saya, the moment she was in the apex of the delirium, was how _hot_ it was. Searingly, meltingly hot. She felt both mesmerized and mildly repulsed by the heat and sweat rising all around her, a boiling spring comprised of a hundred different bodies, a hundred different heartbeats.

But the deafening music made her own blood boil, made it rush like nitro through her veins, pulsing against her ears in a sensory confirmation, reminding her she was _alive_.

She felt Haji's hands slide across her waist, drawing her nearer. Pressed very close, almost length-to-length, cool lips against her forehead in an unmistakable kiss. The Chiropteran hand, wrapped in that soft, faintly scratchy fabric of white swath, holding her small hand in his, lightly squeezing. She smiled and squeezed back. They were not so much dancing as swaying, front and back, side by side, more immersed in each other's physical proximity than any superfluous movement.

These days, the mood evoked by dancing had definitely altered, she thought.

In her heyday, it had been about rise and fall, about technique and modus operandi. But this was far more basic, almost primordial. Just the simple contact of having someone pressed so close to you, of breathing them in, feeling warm skin against the barrier of clothing. The enjoyment, the not-so-cloaked sensuality of it. Pulse pounding loud and strong, in tandem to the thumping bass.

In the old days, none of this would have been possible. Especially not where she and Haji were raised, bound by decorum and tradition. Rather than staying this way all night, as she realized she would love to, back then, Haji would have been expected to lead her off the dancefloor after two songs, and required to fetch her drinks and pastries.

But here, in the crush of the crowd, the darkness and contrasting flash of lights and confetti, she discovered the joy of just being an anonymous reveler in this vast congested club. No eyes on them, paying them any more mind than necessary. Everyone wrapped up in their own private world, safe within this murk, escaping into the music.

Funny. It _was_ almost like vertical sex.

Smiling, she skimmed her lips teasingly along the curve of Haji's throat, the subtle edge of Adam's apple, and felt him shiver against her.

" _See_?" she mouthed against the point where his jaw met his neck. " _This isn't so bad, is it_?"

Haji didn't answer. He just quirked her chin up with the tips of his fingers, and she smiled in the darkness as his mouth descended on hers.


	9. Weapon Of Choice

David holds up a vial with a slither of red in it.

"It's a cartridge of your blood, designed very recently by Red Shield," he explains to Saya. "For both your nieces, in event of a Chiropteran attack. Since their blood can't kill Chiropterans, they'll need a steady supply of yours, laced on their weapons."

"So how does that work?" inquires Alecto. She, Meg, and Tyler stand behind Saya, watching David demonstrate with the selected weaponry from Red Shield's armory.

David holds up what looks like a dense curved katana, with a hilt that resembles a hypodermic piston. He attaches the blood cartridge to a compartment built into the hilt. A subtle _click_ locks it in place, like the rack of a gun. He presses a button on the side of the hilt. Immediately, the blood is squirted out from an opening; it runs across a groove in the blade, painting it a gleaming red.

"Easy to activate. Efficient," David tells them. "In the event that Saya isn't where her nieces are, they will have her blood to defend themselves. There will be no need for you to keep cutting your palms on their blades, Saya. It will save you precious time."

"That's useful," Meg drawls.

She takes the blade from David, and holds the blade up, examining its razor edge with a feather-light thumb. Her gaze carries the assessing intensity of an expert. Of both twins, Saya has observed that Meg takes after her more than Alecto in terms of swordplay and fencing. When younger, she had several awards and certificates to her credit; these days, she still practices as a hobby.

It will, like these new swords, prove useful now.

David turns to Saya. "We have a similar sword prepared for you, but reports have suggested that you have problems adjusting to different blades."

"It's a possibility," Saya replies, aware of her inflexibility when it comes to Weapon of Choice.

David inclines his head. "I thought that might be the case." He turns to a long black case, snapping open the catches. He withdraws a long foam-wrapped object from within. Saya's eyes widen as he strips off the covering, exposing a brilliant silver blade, a familiar red-and-black-bound hilt with a glowing red stone fixed at the slanted edge.

Slowly, almost formally, he hands it to Saya.

"I believe this is yours. The sword you used to finish the first war. Which you later entrusted to Red Shield for safekeeping."

Saya nods, hesitating for a heartbeat of a second, before she reaches out to take the blade from him. The hilt's criss-cross texture feels rough and familiar under her palms, which are no longer callused from all her years of bloodletting. Yet, despite all the time she has spent inactive, the sword still feels as much an extension of her body as it did before. As though their reunion was inevitable.

As though it has belonged in her hands, then, now, and always.

"We had it tested and sharpened for you," David adds. "To make sure it was still in practicable shape. We also took the liberty of coating the blade with a stronger alloy. It's been kept in peak condition for you."

"Thank you," Saya says quietly.

She recalls, in a bright onslaught of memory, when she first allowed herself to part with her blade. The instrument that had brought on Diva's death, that she had used to decimate and crystallize countless enemies. When the war had ended, and it had gradually settled in her mind that the sword was no longer needed at her side, she had reluctantly handed it over to the then-David. For safekeeping, and as a silent acknowledgement and thanks.

It had taken her almost a year to adjust to not having her sword with her at every moment. Kai had remarked that he would often see her gripping kitchen utensils like weapons, or her own fists in her sleep. The innate tendency honed in her, to fight, to stay on guard with each passing second, had been harder to shake loose. Now, years later, when she had finally believed it was gone, she felt it come back in a vivid outrush, filling her mind with the blood-splattered memories of the early days.

"That's all very good," Alecto cuts in now, typically no-nonsense, "But we have no realistic clue about how many Chiropterans are in that factory. There must be more than a handful, if they could afford to let about a dozen loose in the city, just to piss us off."

"She's right," Tyler intones, even as he takes Meg's sword, and checks the mechanism of the blood cartridge for her, to ensure that it won't run any risk of jamming in battle. "We're going to need considerable back up. And a plan."

"I have one," Saya replies promptly.

The four other people turn to glance at her.

"What plan?" David asks.

"If these scientists want a Chiropteran Queen so badly, that's just what they're going to get. Now listen up. Here's what we'll do…"

* * *

The factory is a vast impregnable hulk of a building, faceless, almost military-looking. Surrounded in a dense wall of concrete, barbed wire swirling across the top. There are no windows across the entire surface of the building. It is a factor that chills each onlooker, though they cannot explain why. But just the idea that this enormous slab of cement and brick, massive and stolid and sullen, has no windows, seems to lend it a deeply grotesque air.

Like a human face without a mouth. Or a human head without a face.

There are no buildings around the factory. The outlying district is bare, deserted. The only things that punctuate the vast emptiness are gnarled trees, bent and crooked, stripped of their leaves and hunched over like victims of a brutal rape. They drape the area in sharp, skeletal shadows, harlequined by the pale glow of moonlight through smog and clouds.

A young woman stands by the trees, hands in the pockets of her long coat. Large, dark eyes surveying the factory, taking in the high walls and the knots of barbed wire. She sees the glint of red at corners of the facility. Electric eyes. Alarm systems.

The woman tilts her head, seeming to come to a mental decision. Then, in a single leap, she suddenly catapults off the ground and through the air, wind whipping back her long hair and her coat. In an ethereal blue haze, she vaults from one bent tree to another, moving in a zigzag pattern that leads her inexorably closer to the factory. Her movements are fast, phenomenally so.

The electric eyes attempt to track her movements, but on camera, within the surveillance area, all that is visible are dull blurs one can logically dismiss as shifting shadows. The security staff at the factory chooses to do so.

And unbeknownst to them, the young woman arcs closer and closer toward the factory. Another rush and flash, and her form hurtles like wind across the high walls, the barbed wire.

She is inside the factory.

* * *

David's face is blue in the glowing light. Seated within the surveillance van, surrounded by two other Red Shield operatives, each one intent on computer consoles, he speaks into a compact set of headphones.

"Are you in the facility yet?"

"I've passed the wall. All I need to do now is get into the building."

"Proceed with caution. We'll await your signal."

"Roger that."

"Alert us at the first sign of Haji."

"Understood."

The connection snaps off.

* * *

She is scaling the perimeter around the factory now. She can feel the presence of vibrating machinery across the ground. Sensors attuned to pick up pressure and weight, body heat. If she stands still for more than a second, she will set off the alarm, raise hell across the entire factory.

So she does not.

Her muscles work on overdrive, attempting with a studied tension to emulate the speed, the weightlessness of wind. Of silent, transparent lightning. She weaves like a specter across the sprawling grounds, her toes barely touching the floor before she sails forward again, a near-invisible form under the glow of moonlight. She closes in on the gateway to the factory. Her sharp eyes make it just in time to see three men loading up a cart with what seem to be machinery parts, wheeling them inside the building.

They go past thick, sliding metal doors. The moment they pass through, one man brings out a keycard, flicking it through a slot. She sees a light burn red. Swiftly, with very little noise, the metal doors begin to slide closed.

The young woman narrows her eyes in resolve. She urges her body to the limit, mentally spurring her muscles to go faster. She has to get through the door. She has to make it inside before the place seals off. This is the only chance she has.

There is a bare two-foot gap between the doors now. Very soon, it will be gone. The gates will seal shut.

Gritting her teeth, the young woman lunges through the grounds, wind whistling past her ears. Her entire body arrows toward the narrowing gap between the metal doors.

_Come on. Come on…_

Abruptly, with a sudden outburst of speed she has not known herself to possess, she surges past the gates. Through them, across them, and into the brightly-lit fluorescent hallway inside the factory.

Behind her, she hears the _click_ and beep of the doors sealing shut.

This is it.

She is in.

* * *

"I've infiltrated the factory," comes the voice on David's headphones.

David's eyes narrow. He drums his fingers against his computer in a half-tense, half-absent motion. "Good job. Stay on your guard. The place is heavily monitored from within. If possible, avoid using your communicator. They might pick up the satellite waves from their own equipment."

"Got it. I'm signing out for now."

"All right. Leave your earpiece on so the girls can receive audiofeed. That way, they'll know when to make their move."

"Fine."

"And be careful."

"I will."

This time, when the connection severs, David hears only static on the other end.

* * *

Haji watches Nike, previously Argus, creep from the chink in the wall.

He wonders what has possessed him to call the lizard _Nike_. He has been keeping only to male names before this. Could it be that the supply has dwindled so rapidly? It hardly seems possible. But then again, in this narrow haunting cell, his own mind picked apart with bursts of pain and hunger, grueling memories of the white lab, his heart shriveling with grief at thoughts of Saya, of the twins, he does not really think he is in a position to term anything as _im_ possible anymore.

He is only aware that, the longer he stays here, the further away he is kept from _her_ , his very soul is sinking and crumbling with the loneliness and deprivation.

_Saya…_

No doubt, it is his constant, metrical recollections of Saya that have driven him to call the lizard Nike today. Nike, goddess of victory. Saya's two nieces had been named after the harbingers of death, the Furies. Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. In theory, Saya should have been Tisiphone, given her blood-steeped hands, her war-torn history.

But to him, she has always been more than that. He has always seen something radiant, something so triumphant about her. Even in the days of the war, when he was weighted down by the grief of his promise to her, she had always been his only source of hope. A misguided light, so fragile and whimsical, put through so much hardship that she had often verged on dissipating.

Yet despite each catastrophe, and perhaps even _because_ of them, she had persevered, despite the wavering, despite the capriciousness. A lilting fairy light, a firefly swooping from one country to another, searching in vain for her place, for her home.

He had always longed to follow after her, to protect her. She was the only light he had in a world that had long ago gone dim.

The door to his cell groans open. His captor steps inside, and Haji immediately intuits the change in the man's steps, the audible acceleration of his breath.

"Haji, you will be pleased to know that Saya is here," the man sneers. "In this very facility."

Haji stiffens, his head snapping up.

_What?_

_Saya… is here?_

Fear and joy take on dueling shapes, struggling for purchase, even as suspicion decrees he hold them both in check. His captor could simply be lying. He could be doing this to torment Haji, the way the scientists in the lab have been, but with Haji's nerves and his flesh rather than the sanctity of his mind. He knows without question that this man is the greater sadist than those scientists will ever be.

And his eyes, so vibrant with perverse delight, only tell Haji of the inevitable.

Saya is indeed here.

_Oh god no…_

_If he gets his hands on her…_

The thoughts have barely cohered before Haji is squirming against his restraining manacles, fighting to free himself, to find his mistress. His captor watches the struggle with disdainful amusement, lips curdling with soundless laughter.

"Haji, you really are predictable," he sneers. "It's so boring, really. I wonder how Saya put up with you for so long. But then again, she is equally at fault for predictability. I wanted her to come to me, and lo and behold, here she is."

"S-Stay away from her!" Haji grates out, in a hoarse voice partways between a hiss and a growl.

His movements against the manacles are not slackening. If anything, they intensify. He feels the dull ache in his tendons, across his wrists, as metal cuts across his thin flesh. But the pain is inconsequential in the face of this tsunami, this overwhelming _need_ to escape from here, to see Saya again, protect her.

His captor merely inclines his head, expression hardening, voice turning cold and sharp. "Stay away from her? From the woman who took away every single shred of my life? Who made me endure all this agony, who made me wait centuries on end until I could reach this point, finally kill her with my own two hands? No, Haji. That's not about to happen. But never fear. When I'm done with her, I'll be generous enough to finish you off too. It's only fair, after all. Till Death do us part, and all that…"

With a low, sickening laugh, Haji's captor turns and exits the cell, slamming the door behind him.

Leaving Haji to wrench against the manacles, again and again, with all the strength he can muster.

His nerves are shrieking in desperation.

_Saya…_

_I have to get to her…_

* * *

Saya moves in a blur through the faceless white corridors. She glimpses tiny black cameras mounted on each corner, at every doorway. Lights blinking red, observing her telltale streaks of motion but unable to discern them as an actual _presence_. She is moving too swiftly, too unstoppably, careening like bolt-lightning through the maze of corridors. The facility is enormous. There are entrances, elevators, passages, wherever she turns.

She needs to get underground. She needs to find Haji.

Another loop and swerve around a vestibule, and she slows at the sign of silver doorways, a set of arrows. The elevator. From her pocket, a thin metal cylinder. Supplied by Red Shield, one of their many infiltrative innovations. Without slowing down, she presses a button as she whizzes past the closed elevator doors. An imperceptible mechanical chime. A signal within her device activated.

Promptly, the elevator's doors slide open, an Aladdin's cave. The cameras mounted within the elevator blink off, briefly disabled by her device. Saya turns and lunges in through the elevator doors, and slams the 'Close' button with her elbow. The doors scrape shut. The floor options are surprisingly limited; just three floors take up space below the factory. On impulse, Saya selects the third floor, lowest one, her very own circle of hell.

She huddles in one corner of the elevator, arms crossed, head lowered, like a lost soul gliding across the Styx to descend into the maw of Hades.

The elevator is noiseless, swift. Saya keeps a wary eye pinned on the camera above her. On guard for sudden activation, tense that she may be discovered.

But her paranoia is injudicious.

The moment the elevator touches the third floor, the doors glide apart. And before Saya can tense into action, make the intended move, she hears a deep and unfamiliar voice assault her ears.

"Welcome, Saya. We've been expecting you."

She flinches, staring in horror at the sight before her.

A vast chamber, high-walled, high-ceilinged, laden with rows of tanks. Dark, grotesque shapes floating in each one, curled fetal and vulnerable as unborn babies held aloft in the womb. Gruesome, full-fledged Chiropterans. Machinery drones, beeping and whirring, an uneasy noise of delirium and regulation, of stability and chaos. A tall man stands in the midst of the machinery and tanks. Pale and gaunt, tall and straight as a spire. A haughty high-cheekboned face; a cruel mouth and dark insolent eyes. He wears a white coat, its corners cut straight and sharp with a cold severity.

Flanking him on either side are at least a dozen uniformed men. Fully armed, with their weapons pointed right at Saya.


	10. Interlude: Lucky

_Interlude: Lucky_

" _Aunt Saya_?" Meg asked, rolling onto her side. " _Can I ask you a question_?"

Saya nodded, turning her head to regard her niece. She felt the warm kiss of sunshine against her skin, the fresh, ticklish, springy feel of grass under her back. She lay on a small slope, at an open picnic area, belly full of food, resulting in a sleepy slackening in her muscles, an unguarded languor in her mind.

In the glow, she little resembled the underfed, on-edge waif she had been during the final months of the war. The young woman lounging in the grass now was sleek and radiant, cheeks rosy with sunshine and well-being.

In the background, she heard Haji strumming a luxuriant melody on his cello, the notes lazy and light and somehow apropos to the atmosphere. Alecto sang an operatic aria in tandem with Haji's playing. Bach's _Jesus bleibet meine Fruede_. Her voice, though as sonorous as her mother Diva's, was different in tenor, in mood. Alecto's songs were tranquil, harmonious; she bore none of Diva's wildfire fury, or the curdling embers of her loneliness.

In accompaniment to Haji's cello, the effect was as soothing as a cool ripple of water.

Of both twins, Alecto was easily Haji's favorite, just as Meg was perhaps Saya's. Saya had noticed, early on, the tacit bond between the two of them, the wordless enjoyment they took in each other's company. Their temperaments were quite similar, she mused, although perhaps Alecto was a tad more informal, more sociable, than the taciturn Chevalier. Indeed, Saya had observed their little bond starting up in the earliest days, in Okinawa, when Alecto would sit reading books all the time while Meg flounced around in the garden, practicing fencing.

Saya remembered how she had walked in one evening to hear Alecto and Haji engrossed in deep discussion on some ancient volume: _Boethius and the Wheel of Fortune_ , a ghastly and depressing tome she'd thumbed through centuries ago, in Joel's mansion. At that time, Saya had set it aside immediately, unable to understand for the life of her what Haji had found so riveting about the thing. It both startled and intrigued her, years later, to hear him sharing information, debating so seriously about it with her niece.

It had also amused Saya to learn that Alecto manifested an interest in operatic classics, and often lent dulcet vocals to tunes played on Haji's cello. There were times when she would see Haji instructing her niece on how to maneuver the bow and ascertain notes across the strings, to exercise her fingers.

It had reminded her of the brief snatches of time she had seen him coaching Riku, during the war, and despite the heartbreaking memory, she had smiled at the sight.

In a way, it had been comforting, to know that during her long sleep, Haji wouldn't be as alone as she often feared he might.

" _Do you ever get jealous, watching Haji with Allie or me_?" Meg prompted her now, the sun outlining her dark hair a rich chocolate brown.

Saya blinked in surprise, staring at the younger queen. " _No. Of course not. Why would you ask such a thing_?"

Meg hesitated, then lay beside Saya in the grass, plucking fabric pills from the purple sweater she wore. " _Nothing_. _Just… I see the way you are with Haji. How he is with you. It's obvious you love each other so much. But if I felt that way about anyone…I don't think I'd be able to stand someone else talking to them. I don't understand how_ you _can. You must be so tolerant."_

" _That's…sweet of you to think so, Meg,"_ Saya said carefully, trying to ascertain what had brought this uncharacteristic fit of uncertainty. Introspection was more Alecto's tendency than Meg's. _"But to be honest, it isn't the same thing. I don't see either you or Alecto as… rivals or anything like that. You're as important to me as Haji is. We're all family, after all."_

" _I know, I know,"_ Meg amended _. "I didn't mean it that way. But sometimes… sometimes I wonder…"_

" _Wonder what?"_

" _What it feels like, to have someone who'll love you this much. Someone like Haji. Not that I'm saying I want_ Haji _per se—"_

" _No, of course not,"_ Saya laughed, but not unkindly.

Meg laughed too, low and wistful, and glanced in the direction of her singing sister and the silent Chevalier. " _I just mean_ ," she went on. " _That I wish I could find someone like that. Not necessarily a Chevalier… but someone who'd love me the same way Haji loves you. Not as his queen, not as just another pretty face… but just for_ me _. For who I am."_

Saya hesitated, then touched Meg's arm. " _What makes you think you won't get someone like that, Meg_?"

Meg shrugged, exhaling. " _Aunt Saya… the kind of thing you and Haji have… it's not something every person can get. Not everyone is that lucky. It just makes me feel like it's never going to be for me."_

" _Oh, but Meg, why would you think that? You still have your whole life ahead of you. And… you're such an incredible girl. Why wouldn't you find someone who'll love you for who you are?"_

" _Not sure. Although the phrase Non-human comes to mind."_

Saya sighed. She empathized, deeply and silently, with the younger queen's dilemma. Where she'd learnt through trial and error, discerning her own bloodline and origins, Meg had grown up acutely aware of what she was. And aware too, that these humans she sailed alongside, their customs and behavior made her own by more upbringing than instinct, would never truly be able to know her, understand her.

That even if they did, there was a despairing folly to the knowledge that they would never exist as long as she would, never be able to keep up with her.

Selecting a Chevalier as a lover was the most obvious option. But not everyone was as fortunate as Saya in that respect, to turn someone who had already been silently, intensely devoted to her, a devotion that the unplanned transformation had only served to enhance tenfold.

Lured by the promise of living an eternity, to remaining ever-young and ever-strong, power-hungry and manipulative humans could easily worm their way into a trusting girl's bed, and her heart, Chiropteran queen or no.

And Saya had witnessed, firsthand, that even as Chevaliers, these humans had minimal desire to serve and protect their queen.

" _Meg,"_ Saya said, and her tone was gentle, serious. _"I'm sure, when the time comes, you'll meet someone who'll be able to accept that. Who will love you regardless of who or what you are. That's the person you should choose as your Chevalier."_

Meg bit her lip, pausing, then let off a small contemplative smile. " _Hmm. That'd be nice_."

" _It would. And you've still got plenty of years to find that person."_

" _I guess so. Although, when I do_ …"

" _What?"_

Meg hesitated, then turned to glance at Saya, serious despite her smile. _"When I do, I want to know if you'll approve. I'd want you to like him, as much as I'd want Alecto to. In a way, maybe more. I'd want your approval."_

Saya shook her head. _"You don't need my approval, Meg. You have your own life, just like Alecto has hers. You're free to make your own decisions. Just follow your instincts, and I know you'll make the right choice."_

" _Was that how it was with you and Haji?"_

" _Well… we'd known each other awhile before anything happened, Meg. I don't think it qualifies as the same thing."_

" _Yeah. I guess not."_ Meg paused, then cracked a wide, teasing smirk _. "Not everyone has their very own sex buddy shipped right to their door."_

" _Meg!"_

Saya was up to deliver a much-deserved chastising, but Meg leapt to her feet and danced out of the way, leaving Saya half-scowling, half-smiling under the bright sunshine. As she stood there, her eyes met Haji's across the grass. Seated on a stone bench, cello propped against his knees, the faint breeze stirring dark tendrils of hair across his cheeks. Alecto sat curled beside him, rather like a little girl or a cat, singing in time to the oscillating notes.

Watching him with her niece, Saya thought back on what Meg had remarked. She paused, and a slow, pensive smile flitted across her lips.

_Meg's right. I really am very lucky. Despite everything that's happened, I have someone who I'll never be able to get anywhere else for the asking. There's so much I have to be grateful for._

_I don't know where I'd be now, if something happened to..._

As though sensing her inner-monlogue, Haji turned and gave Saya one of his faint riveting smiles.

Shaking the tremor of premonition that bloomed from her thoughts, Saya couldn't help smile back.


	11. Scarlet Spike

**CW: Violence/Gore**

* * *

Saya gapes at the man before her, at the armed guards and the tanks. Her face immobile, frozen, as her pupils contract to invisible pinpricks. Confusion and shock clogs her throat; in the next instant the same emotions rend it wide open.

"Who the hell are you?" she blurts at the man.

The stranger tilts his head, ironical, amused. "Of course, you wouldn't know me. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Most men in my position always remain hidden in the background. No one really cares who we are, what we think and feel. No one even cares when we cease to exist. You so-called heroes, least of all."

Abruptly, he snaps his fingers.

In the heartbeat that ensues, the men on either side of him open fire, without prelude or pause. Strobelike flashes erupt from their semi-automatic guns. The roar of bullets fills the air. Saya's Chiropteran instincts take hold across her muscles, a film of hot fuel. She pirouettes sideways, evading the first onslaught of bullets. Shrapnel and bits of concrete spew behind her in a zigzag pattern, shredding the walls, the elevator doors, to confetti.

Before the second spate of bullets can follow, Saya whips out her sword—not the elegant red-punctuated hilt she has used during the war—but the Red Shield prototype given to her nieces. As she grips the blade, two-fisted, she feels a quaking qualm. Her attackers are human, not Chiropteran. But then the subsequent fireshower cuts blazing channels across the air, bullets swooping toward her, and she ceases to consider who or what these men are.

Lunging forward, in eyeblink speed, she cuts across the gap between her and her attackers. One powerful straight-armed swing, and the hands of the closest two men are dismembered, flying through the air amid hot splashes of blood. Their guns clatter to the ground, still purging bullets. Saya pays them no mind, already intent on the second batch. Another arc of her sword, and more limbs and weaponry fly severed through the air.

However, by this much time, the remaining gunmen have closed in on her. Saya's body jolts, a jerky marionette, as bullets embed themselves like hot bites into her flesh. Red spray bursts from her shoulders, her arms and legs; she grits her teeth and stumbles backward, grip loosening on her sword.

Then suddenly the mysterious cold-eyed man is there. He lunges toward Saya and extends a hand, which transforms before her eyes.

Skin tingeing gray, abrading with rough leathery bumps. Fingers elongating, swelling, nails erupting in dagger-sharp tips. His hand severs apart like a snapping Venus flytrap; a dense red spike arrows out from between the space, hurtling toward her. Saya screams as the spike pierces her through her stomach, bursting through from the other side, sending her flying back to the floor.

Her sword jangles out of her grasp.

She tries to reach for it, but discovers she cannot move; the spike has impaled her to the floor.

Grunting, teeth clenched, she struggles to extricate the jutting, obscene red barb from her stomach. But pain clamors in searing bursts before her eyes, and she can only fall back against the floor, gasping.

Her attacker, the tall man, smirks as he closes in on her. "Hurts, doesn't it?" he says, almost conversational. "Of course, it's only a fraction, a tiny speck, compared to the pain you inflicted on so many other people. It's only fair that you get your comeuppance, even if it _is_ centuries overdue."

Reaching out with his foot, he kicks the spike deeper in place. Saya screeches in pain, eyes flashing red, hands scrabbling at the instrument of torture.

Her attacker is unmoved by her agony. He holds out his own hand, monstrously elongated and distorted, before Saya's face. "This, Saya. This is one of the many prices I paid, in order to achieve immortality. In order to be here now, so I could take your life with my own hands. And I don't intend to rush it."

Saya's lip curdles in pain and anger. "Who are you?" she grits out.

"Who am I? Why, probably your biggest devotee, second only to Haji. Although for completely different reasons." The man's eyes blaze red; hatred sharpens his voice to a fine brutal point. "I am neither Sif, nor Chevalier. What I am, coasts on the line somewhere in the middle. Nameless and placeless. The way my entire existence has been, since you ripped it apart in Vietnam."

Saya's fingers whiten on the red spike. "In… Vietnam?"

"Of course, although naturally, you wouldn't remember. Really, when have you ever thought about anyone but yourself?" His eyes blaze, but he feigns politeness, inclining his head in a semi-bow. "Still, perhaps introductions are in order. My name is Craig Sanborn. I was one of the scientists ordered to awaken you with your chevalier's blood, that night in Vietnam. I did, and the last thing I can remember is the feeling of my own arms and legs being torn out of my body. Of watching them fly past me through the air, of feeling my clothes soaked and heavy with my own blood. All this, by your hand."

Saya grimaces, bewildered and splintered by pain. "M-me…?"

"Yes, _you_. Before I was attacked that night, I was one of Red Shield's topmost scientists. Head of their Research division. The position I had struggled all my life to achieve. Your artificially-induced awakening was to be the feather in my cap. My crowning achievement. But you, Saya, you snatched it from me the moment you opened your eyes. And you rampaged through the entire area, slaughtering, tearing apart all my colleagues. My wife, who was also present in the division. Three months pregnant. If she had lived, perhaps she would have given me a son. Someone to take after me, look up to me. Of course, thanks to _you_ , we'll never know—"

Abruptly he leans forward, jamming the spike deeper into Saya's flesh. Saya chokes in pain, a thin trickle of blood dripping from her lips.

Through her swimming vision, she looks up at the man's face. His lips are stretched tight, pulled back in an obscene smile; his eyes are aglow with perverse pleasure. "That night, Saya, officially, I was recorded dead. In a way, I suppose I did die that night. My body was discovered, barely aspirating, by a troop of men who worked for the enemy. For Amshel Goldsmith, and Diva."

"Wh-what?"

"Yes. These men, they were scouting the aftermath of your attack, on Amshel's instructions. Looking for survivors, for men who could be taken back for information about Red Shield. I was one of them. But no one had to torture me, make me talk. I gave the information willingly. I carried a great deal of scientific details. Of chiropteran sleep cycles, feeding and hunting behavior. Amshel saw some potential in keeping me alive; he could see I was on the verge of death, so to stop it, he gave me Diva's blood."

Saya's eyes widen, wavering. "Then you're… a Chevalier?"

"No. Not in the true sense of the word. Diva was never aware of my existence. She never personally granted me her blood. I imbibed it from a preserved pack, like the labrat I was. Despite my transformation to Chevalier, there were multitudes of tests conducted on me. Those which were too fatal, too noxious, even for the likes of that other Chevalier, Karl. He had a purpose in Diva's fold, after all. Not much of one, but a purpose, regardless. As for myself, I was deemed even lower than that. If Karl was the robot, I was his punching bag. The downtrodden wheel to his guinea pig."

"B-but then… how are you still alive?"

The man chuckles, mirthless soulless, the sound like a fit of hissing. "For one purpose alone, Saya. To find some way out of that torture-box, and to kill you. I was kept as an experiment all the way upto your battle with Diva in the MET. But the moment Goldsmith holdings were ruined, the moment Cinq Fleshe was shut down, I managed to escape from my filthy little cage. Imagine my disappointment, learning that you were still alive, and that you had gone into your long sleep. In that moment, I decided, I would find a way to get back at you, to make you suffer, just as I suffered."

Saya watches him speechlessly. Her hands are pale and trembling around the red spike. Her struggles to wrench it loose are in vain; she can see her own blood spreading beneath her in an ever-widening circle.

"It took me years, but I was able to take on a new identity, reintegrate myself with Red Shield. While those idiots worked towards ridding the world of remaining Chiropterans, I gathered information, samples, which would enable me to _preserve_ them, to _reproduce_ them. I worked for years, right under Red Shield's nose, to enable a Chiropteran rebirth. All the while biting my tongue and stomaching the rage, knowing _you_ still lived and existed, that you still had the gall to walk aNd talk and breathe air, when in fact you deserved to shrivel to death and be wiped off the face of the earth!"

Saya winces, unnerved, riddled with pain. "But… why?" she croaks. "If all you wanted… was to kill me… then why do you want to bring back chiropterans?"

"Because I despise this world!" screams the man, and his eyes are a-crackle with wrath and unmasked insanity. "I despise the fact that you loved this world—loved it enough to save it! Anything loved by you, is profaned in my eyes! It sickens me so much I can't breathe in it! A world where _my_ life fell to ruin, while _you_ , who took the lives of so many others, were allowed to go free. You're an abomination released on biggest there is, because you destroyed your own race, your own blood, but still deluded yourself to thinking _you_ could go free. You killed your own sister under the pretext that Chiropterans didn't deserve to exist, and spent the remaining decades enjoying life and luxury as only a human could ever be allowed to! As _I_ was supposed to do! So why shouldn't I give back to that world what it gave to me? Why shouldn't I make them suffer and grieve, just as I have done all these years!?"

Saya stares at him, in a silent, chill fascination, like a rabbit about to be devoured by a snake. Her breathing is erratic, sharp; her eyes remain ever-fixed to the man's face. She can see the sanity peeling off his face, shred by shred, like some horrific fruit from hell.

Unearthing the seeds of macabre madness, obsessive unbelievable destruction beneath.

"It took me close to a century, Saya, but gradually, I formed a network of people within Red Shield, people who would keep me posted on your whereabouts, your awakenings, the activities of your family. I gathered enough resources to revive the Chiropteran experiments. All I needed was a venue, and manpower. I was lucky enough to meet a group of scientists, ones who had been asking questions on Chiropteran history in Red Shield's Iceland base. I got in contact with them, and offered to share my findings, all the knowledge I carried about your species. My allies and I defected from Red Shield, set up base here. And in exchange for using their funding, I agreed to secure them a genuine Chevalier. Your darling Haji."

Saya pales, her face contorting. Her efforts to free herself intensify, but the spike is fixed in place, an affix of agony. Her own blood is a vast scarlet pond around her, soaking her clothes, sticking to tendrils of her hair.

"Well, Saya, there you have it. All the long years I've waited, hoping to get my hands on you at last. I knew, the moment your Awakening took place, that it would be your last. And I find it fitting that you should die from the same blood that was supposed to kill you, back in the MET. Your sister's."

Smiling widely, grotesquely, he motions to one of the adjacent gunmen. Obediently, the gunman moves toward one of the tanks, securing a dense vial from the attached machinery. Saya blanches at the blood brimming the vial, and her struggles against the spike grow fiercer. The tall man, Craig Sanborn, merely watches her squirm with an expression of pure, eerily-unadulterated joy, and Saya feels her flesh prickle in fear and hatred, her heart hammering spastically in her chest.

She can only watch, static, paralyzed, as Sanborn takes the vial and pops it open. From his hideous metamorphosed hand, another red spire oozes out like an obscene tongue. He smears Diva's blood across the jagged tip, and tosses the vial aside. His breathing is harsh, barely-reigned; Saya cannot help but compare it to someone veering on intense, unbearable excitement, riding the giddy edge of a climax turned to death.

"With my own hand now, Saya," Sanborn growls. "I will blot you out from this world where you never deserved to be."

And with that, he swings his arm down, releasing the spike at Saya's chest.

Saya's jagged scream echoes like a siren throughout the factory as the blood-daubed barb rips into her flesh.


	12. Interlude: Watching

_Interlude: Watching_

She had long since grown accustomed to how steadily he watched her.

During the earliest years, when she had set out on her mission to kill Diva, she had often felt his eyes on her. Unwavering, intent, cataloguing her every gesture and expression. In carriages, in empty barns, under tall canopied trees, within single compartments of moving trains. Those pale, calm eyes, a winter sky just on the verge of dawn, laced with such infinite understanding, such keen vigilance.

Always watching her.

With each arduous year she'd spent tailing Diva, her surroundings had shifted. Vast towering peaks in Switzerland, cramped tenements and crowded squares in France, bustling carriages and grimy cobblestones in England. New locations, new faces, unfamiliar beds and foods. The world rushed obliviously around her, advancing, multiplying, and developing. Time moved quickly for humans, minutes turning to hours, hours to days, and days to years. Every concept she ever knew, every perception she ever held, was constantly shifting, metamorphosing into something new.

But through it all, Haji's presence, his silent, unpressing gaze, was home for her. Even in the years when she hadn't consciously been aware it was.

After Diva's death, after the MET bombardment, that feature did not change. Haji's eyes on her, in that same soft wakeful gaze that was preset through the decades, had become as necessary for her as sunlight, as air. In his eyes, she would always be _Saya_. Even though she altered with every Awakening, mellowed or hardened with every different circumstance, her elemental matrix, the very essence that defined who she was, remained unchanged in Haji's eyes.

Through his regard, she could sink as though in a cleansing pool of water. Pretensions, personas, defenses stripped away. Only the fragile undefined substance within, bared and brought to the surface.

The consciousness of his eyes on her, ceaselessly watching her, was like a reaffirmation of her own existence, a sanction of who she still was, and would always remain.

So it was understandable that she felt a sharp sinking fear, like a candle about to extinguish, whenever that gaze was withdrawn.

" _I'm sorry_ ," she sobbed that evening, when the hush between them was so heavy she feared she might choke. " _I didn't know he would kiss me. I had no idea. Otherwise I wouldn't have come near him_."

Haji's expression was flat, abstracted. Standing by the window, he didn't look at her, but kept his gaze pinned to the view below. " _You did not try to stop him_."

Saya bit her lip. " _I was just surprised, that's all! It was so crowded, I could hardly see straight_!"

" _You were not drunk_."

" _No, I wasn't. I know that. And it doesn't make it any less excusable. But I didn't mean to kiss him, Haji—I swear. I never wanted to. I'm so sorry._ _You know I am_!"

Her Chevalier's expression, while not stony, was nonetheless bland, emotionless. He still refused to look at her.

The mishap had occurred in London, when Saya had gone out to one of the pubs downtown, with Meg and Alecto. Haji had been out to run errands, but they had later expected to meet him at the pub as well. While her nieces had gotten nicely-toasted on a sharp-tasting English beer that Saya had barely allowed herself, straining to follow their conversation through the blaring music and cacophony of shouts and laughter, she had felt a hand tap her shoulder.

A young man, gangling, mid-twenties, with an attractive wry smile, had asked her if she'd like to dance. Saya had been on the verge of politely declining, but Meg had grinned her brilliant Cheshire Cat grin and teased, " _Oh come on, aunt Saya. Just one friendly dance. It's not gonna kill you_." Saya had hesitated, but Meg added that Haji wasn't expected to show until the next half-hour or so. Surely he wouldn't mind if she danced for just a few minutes instead of sitting idle and waiting for him.

Saya wasn't entirely sure she had said 'yes', but either way, the next thing she knew, she had been out in the crowded dancefloor with the young man. She'd let him steer her around, bumping occasionally against one of the many bodies that packed the floor. Music juddering loud and sharp, blending with the skirl of voices, filling her ears to an almost unpleasant degree.

The young man had been holding her perhaps a tad too close, but it hadn't been anything to warrant alarm.

Until he'd smiled and pressed up against her, and his hands had started getting a little too friendly. Saya, even dense as she was when it came to recognizing those overtures, knew a warning sign when she felt it. She had been in the process of extricating herself from the young man's grasp—without having to break one of his arms or knock out his teeth in the process—when he'd suddenly yanked her up close and planted a sloppy beer-flavored kiss on her lips.

Saya had been so stunned she'd stood paralyzed for almost three whole seconds. Her eyes were still wide open, and in a haze of shock she'd happened to glance toward the twins' table. Meg and Alecto were both looking elsewhere, chatting it up with a few patrons.

But, at the edge of their booth, seated there as though he had only just slipped through the door, was Haji.

His eyes were on her, impassive, unblinking. Watching her.

And she could imagine all too clearly how the scene must have looked to him.

What happened next had been a fast-forwarded blur. Saya had pushed the young man away, and, face burning with mortification, shuffled back to the table. She'd been unable to look Haji in the eye the entire evening. And, with a plummeting, suffocating feeling in her chest, she'd noticed that Haji did not once look at her either.

Of both the twins, Alecto had been quicker to notice Saya's silence and Haji's more-impassive-than-usual expression. She had asked them if something was wrong, but they hadn't answered. The entire trip home, Saya had felt immersed in a squirming, stifling sense of discomfort, of guilt.

Haji, while infinitely more patient than she, in every sense of the word, was not impervious to anger or jealousy. But unlike her, he did not lash out, or petulantly sulk—he simply withdrew. Detaching deep into his own self, into the shatterproof tomb of his own mind, a place that even Saya, despite how long she had known him, had never been able to infringe.

And like a tomb, his gaze too, would seal shut. He would never once look at her—a wrenching withdrawal that made Saya feel as though the world around her was crashing into senseless blackness.

She couldn't exist save for in the wake of his gaze. If he denied her that acknowledgement, that fundamental bond, she ceased to be whole, to be real.

In face of the eternity she faced as a Chiropteran, ageless and inhuman, it was a terrifying sensation.

" _Haji, please_ ," she said now, and her voice wavered, dangerously close to tears. " _You know I didn't mean it. It just happened. I didn't want that boy to kiss me—I've never looked twice at anyone who wasn't you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I upset you. Please don't be angry anymore."_

Haji still did not turn to look at her. She noticed his lips firming, pressing in a thin uncommunicative line.

" _Please_ ," she begged, and, desperate to bridge the divide between them, she took his hand. Small fingers interlacing with his, running gently back and forth across the sensitive skin between. He'd always liked that, she knew; he always softened when she touched him this way.

But the pale, elegant hand in hers remained wholly unresponsive. Not rigid, not jerking away, but simply limp.

Saya's throat burned. She leaned closer, so her own body, overheating with tears and shame, pressed against the cool dark fabric of his clothes. Lips close to his ear, whispering to him as the tears finally seeped through. " _Haji… Haji, I'm sorry. Please don't be angry anymore. I can't stand it. Please… I'm sorry. It was an accident. You know that! You_ know _!"_

She felt the tears running in hot channels across her face, dripping down her chin. A stray drop hit the back of Haji's hand, held tight in her shaking fingers. In its wake, the tear seemed to spread its own heat through him, defrosting the glaze of cool distance. His shoulders, so stiffly held, immediately slackened, and the lax palm in hers softened, shifting, abruptly responding to her touch.

" _Saya_ …" Turning, Haji's finally met her gaze with his. His expression was startled and a little bit pained. He lifted his hand and gently wiped the tears off her face. " _Saya, it's all right. I'm not… angry with you_."

Saya leaned into the contact with the fervor of acquittal, a sob bubbling up and out of her. When his arms came around her, drawing her close, she felt the sudden dizzying relief of a parachute snapping open, knowing that without it, she would have swooped headlong into despair. Then Haji's lips were on her overwarm face, kissing the tears away, tracking along her closed eyelids, her cheekbones, before fixing feverishly on her mouth.

Saya gave herself with relief to the sultry absorbing kisses without end. When Haji swept her up off the floor, carrying her to the couch to deposit her on his lap, she barely noticed.

" _I'm sorry, Haji_ ," she breathed, when her lips broke from his. " _I really am. Please tell me you're not mad with me_."

" _Saya, don't cry anymore_ ," Haji murmured, and his gaze, still fixed on hers, was so troubled. " _I told you before. I never want to see you crying. Least of all because of me_."

" _I know. I just… I didn't mean to kiss that boy. I know how it looked to you, but I really didn't. We were just dancing, and—"_

" _It's all right, Saya. Never mind."_ His voice was so gentle, as were his lips on her forehead, kissing the fluttering pulse beneath her temples. She shut her eyes and wrapped her arms tight around him, drinking in this wonderful liberating reprieve. Despite her still-reckless unthinking nature, she loved how he always excused her, forgave her of everything.

When they first met, their relationship had always veered, unspoken, to _her_ whims, _her_ decisions—but over the years the balance had shifted, evening out. She knew now, better than before, that she had no right to take him for granted, to believe that he would blindly follow her, as was her due. They had started out disproportionately, mistress and servant, but they were lovers today, partners and equals, and now when she saw Haji pricked with this affliction, it was Saya who felt the sting.

She knew in her bones that she would have dissipated to nothing, years ago, if not for him. He was as much a part of her as the warm blood, the salty tears, coursing through her body.

" _I get so scared when you act this way_ ," she whispered, shuddering. " _When you close up, don't talk to me. You're all I have left, Haji. The girls have their own lives. Without you, I'll be all alone. And it terrifies me. I'm sorry I upset you. Please don't be angry anymore."_

" _Ssh. Saya… I'm the one who should be apologizing. I should have realized what was happening. Only I…"_ He faltered, glancing away.

" _What_?" Saya pressed.

" _It's nothing. Only_ …" Haji hesitated, then looked back at her. " _Sometimes I worry about how long I will be able to make you happy. I wonder if one day, you will decide to move on. And when I saw you with that boy, I just thought…_ "

" _Thought what? That I'd replace you, just like that_?" Grief and incredulity dug twin fangs into Saya's chest; she felt her tears spill afresh. " _Oh God Haji. How could you think that? After everything that's happened, do you really think I'd be able to go on without you?"_

" _Saya, I_ —"

Her lips were on his in the next instant, drinking the words into breathless incoherence, kissing him hungrily as though to extract his doubts away like wanted venom. Haji responded to the gesture in kind; the Chiropteran hand, left unbandaged, stroked her hair, gliding across her back, her arms. When she finally drew back, gulping in air, his face glistened with her tears, and what, strangely enough, might have even been his own.

She swallowed, and her forehead fell to press against his, limbs thrumming from the hypnotic Doppler effect of his proximity.

" _Haji_ ," she whispered. " _Please, please don't ever think again, that I'd ever find someone to replace you. That's impossible. There's never been anyone in my life like you. You're my first, and I swear you'll be my last."_

" _Saya…"_

" _Please. Please say you forgive me. You do, don't you_?"

" _Of course I do."_ Again, he lifted his hand to wipe away the tears on her face, thumb stroking the moist curve of her cheek. " _I'm sorry I made you cry. I wasn't thinking. But that is no excuse. I never want you to be hurt, especially on my part."_

Saya watched his eyes, locked on her own, so unguarded, concealing absolutely nothing. Another sob threatened to surge through; she bit her lip and forced it down. Her voice was choked, half-stifled. " _Haji_ …"

" _I'm sorry, Saya. I truly am."_

" _I know. We both are. Let's just…"_ She hiccoughed, managing a watery smile. _"Let's just forget about what happened."_

" _If that is what you wish…"_ That automatic phrase, the one she hadn't heard since the days of the war. The phrase which she had later coerced him into abandoning, for both their sakes, because it reminded her of too much he had endured at her hand, of too much blood that had been shed because of her.

She flinched, but fought back the spate of memories, curling tighter into his embrace. For a long while, there was no sound except the minute rhythm of her breathing, the _tick-tock_ of the old-fashioned clock on the mantelpiece.

" _Saya_ ," Haji murmured then, his voice austerely quiet.

" _Hm_?" She raised her head to regard him.

" _About that boy who kissed you. When we left the pub, I happened to glance at the building he entered, a block away. If I want, I can track him down. Would you like me to… have a talk with him?"_

The barely-reigned buzz of tension under his clothing, humming in waves off his skin, told Saya that 'having a talk' was most likely the last thing on Haji's mind. She managed a faint smile, even as she was deeply aware that if she gave the word, the consequence was likely to result, not in Haji bruising the boy up, but probably in another obituary to read about in next morning's paper.

" _Um… I really don't think it's necessary_ ," she said. " _We all have a little too much to drink every now and then_."

" _Perhaps so. But_ —"

" _It's all right, Haji. I'd… really prefer not having you charged with manslaughter_."

Haji's lips curved faintly at the corners, but his voice was serious. " _I would cover my tracks_."

" _I'm sure you would._ _But it really wouldn't be a fair fight. That guy wouldn't stand a chance."_ She smiled, glancing back at him, at those pale clear eyes that verified her very being, always so watchful and calming and attentive. Where would she be, but lost to chaos and confusion, without him to guide her way? Then, now and always?

Her smile widening, she cupped the side of his face in her hand, and reveled in the cool contact of his palm as he brought his own hand to cover hers.

" _He doesn't have a chance_ ," she repeated, gently, seriously. " _And as long as you're with me, no one else will either_. _Not now, not ever_."


	13. Furies

**CW: Violence/Gore**

* * *

The surveillance operative pauses mid-slurp on his soda, gaping at the screen.

"Jesus…"

The two other operatives, a man and a woman, turn in their seats to regard him. The walls around them are filled with rows upon rows of monitors, a hundred grotesque eyes throwing hazy light across the dark room.

"What?" the woman asks.

"It's the Chevalier in cell 46," the man says, with a tinge of unease. "Since that Chiropteran queen stepped into the facility, he's been getting crazier and crazier. I'm pretty sure he's trying to break loose."

"Seriously?" The two operatives rise from their seats to regard the image on the monitor. The second man winces. "Shit. He's really whanging away on those chains."

"I know. At this rate, he might snap his restraints."

"We should call the meds. Have him sedated fast. If he busts out, we'll all be in deep shit."

"I'll call someone from the lab," the woman says, and turns to pick up a phone. Her hand freezes in mid-air, eyes locked on the image on one of the screens before her. She gasps, her pupils contracting in shock.

"Holy mother of—!"

She can barely finish the sentence before red warning lights begin to flash across the room, and the ululating shriek of a Klaxon siren fills the air.

' _Warning_ ,' intones a voice from the speakers. ' _Intruder alert_. _Repeat. Intruder alert_!'

* * *

Craig Sanborn's face is inert in shock. His eyes, expanded, luminous with the glow of madness, of rage and triumph, fast-waning.

Incredulous, aghast, he lowers the bloodstained red spike and regards the figure sprawled before him.

Saya nurses a deep abrasion through her chest, a scant few inches above the second spike still impaling her belly. Blood oozes thickly from the wound, mingling with the dark rust of blood already gushing from her stomach. But both wounds are gradually narrowing, the blood-flow dwindling, thinning out. Grimacing, teeth clenched, Saya grasps the red spike buried in her stomach with both hands, squeezes her eyes shut, and _pulls_.

With a hot tearing and a sharp splatter of blood, the dislodged spike comes loose. Saya grunts and lets it drop between trembling hands, doubling over and clutching at her perforated gut and chest. Blood dribbles in stark rivulets between her fingers, staining her clothes, dripping to the floor. Beads of sweat lace her quivering brow.

But the wounds are fast fading, blood petering and tapering to nothingness.

Diva's blood, mingling with her own, should have crystallized her in seconds, should have filled her body with stone coagulation the way her scream had only recently infused the air.

But there is no crystallization. Her flesh remains supple, colored pale peach under a film of sweat and blood.

Sanborn's mouth is a hole in his ashen face.

"What…?" he croaks, aghast. "B-but how…?"

Saya swallows dryly, then lifts her head, eyes locking with Sanborn's.

But her eyes are no longer the wide, frightened chestnut of a doe at bay. They are narrower, longer, a scintillating gray that sparkles, despite the agony flickering through the rest of the face, with amusement and defiance. Her face, her form, is fast transforming under her bloodied clothes, becoming longer, broader, lankier; her hair is curling, altering from straight black to a wavy pale blond, like swirls of sunlight breaking through night sky.

Both Sanborn and his remaining gunmen jerk back in tandem, unnerved and incredulous, as Tyler staggers to his feet, still half-hunched, clutching at his wounded torso. Blood drips to the floor around his boots, sending faint ripples through the crimson puddle already beneath him. Tyler is breathing hard, still willing his body to recover from the foray of pain, of the resultant weakness.

But despite it, he tilts his head, and shoots his enemies a tight, mocking smile:

"Gotcha."

And all throughout the factory, red lights pulsate in tandem to shrill sirens as a voice bellows:

' _Warning! Intruder alert! Repeat! Intruder alert_!'

* * *

They erupt into the factory with the sudden violence of a dam breaking open. Water turned to fierce, unstoppable motion, the current of force and speed that translates into blinding violence, into the irresistible momentum of destruction. Swords held aloft in each one's hands, a projectile of anger and carnage, eyes blazing under the flash of scarlet lights. Two pairs red. One blue.

Their battlecries meld and burgeon with the din of the sirens.

There are guards stationed to greet them, to block their paths. Gleaming guns held up and ready, dark visors reflecting the pale faces of the three women before them. Bullets roar from their weapons like a lampoon of blazing hail. Shrapnel zings, smoke spewing through the air. Shards of concrete and glass go flying.

The three women swoop and pirouette past each smoking trail, each buzzing bullet, as though participating in a macabre dance. Their swords flash across the red lights, quicksilver turned to steel, hewing limbs in their wake amid splatters of blood and terrible screams.

The air is a rictus of pounding sirens, agony-shattered howls, barks of gunfire and the hiss and whine of steel cutting air and flesh.

It is the habitation of Death, an epic scene from the parable of a Greek battle, and the three women in the center, the Furies, harbingers of slaughter.

Saya heads the trio, her eyes blazing a heated red, much deeper and sharper than the pinkish lights flashing through the air. Her sword, the one she wielded during the final battle with Diva, held poised in both hands, emanating amputation and execution to any form it connects with. In the midst of this fugue, she cannot allow herself to dwell on the knowledge that she is killing humans, just as she did that night in Vietnam.

Her hesitation and remorse refuse to manifest just yet. She knows only that these men stand in the way of her route to retrieving Haji, and the primal rage that surges through her more than blots out sharp shards of contrition.

_Haji…_

_I have to get to him…_

At either side of her, like graceful, lethal wings made flesh, are Alecto and Megaera. They hold their blades ascendant in their hands, bringing them down in chilling eyeblink slashes that dismember limbs, that decapitate heads. Meg's eyes flicker red, the shade of a log-fire on the verge of igniting into flame; Alecto's are a cool electric blue, intense and unstoppable as a surge of lightning hurled to the earth.

They have been involved in battles before, of course. Their histories, though perhaps not as riddled with atrocity as Saya's, have forced them to endure situations where the loss of human life is a necessary casualty in the face of the overall Mission.

" _We've had to kill people before too, Saya_ ," Meg had once told her, when Saya had been grieving over her foray in Vietnam, " _It wasn't easy, but we did. All_ we _know is that, if we didn't kill them, at least a thousand more would have died. It's not an easy arithmetic, but it's the only way it can be justified_. _We did what we had to._ "

And, this too, Saya is compelled to do, because she has to. Because it is not just her life at stake here, but also her nieces'. And Tyler's, who boldly agreed to disable the alarms and slip into the factory under her guise, to lure the lion's share of the enemy's attention away from them.

And Haji's, without whose presence she can feel herself corroding from within, her fiber of spirit shivering away to leave only a stark framework of her most base self behind.

_God, Haji…_

_I have to find him._

_I_ have _to._

She feels bullets streaking past her, so close she can see their smoketrails. Her ears buzz as though a dozen hornets are engulfing her. Raising a vibrating battlecry, Saya brandishes her sword and lunges for the closest gunman. An angular swipe, and his gun clatters to the floor, in the wake of his severed hands and a hot river of blood. Scarlet splashes across Saya's face as she whirls around, intercepting the gun-butt of another opponent, her sword slicing off his arms in a fountain of red. Both men howl unstoppably, spasming, falling to the floor.

"Look alive, aunt Saya!" Meg calls in the foreground, and Saya jerks out of the way just as her niece comes blazing past, impaling her own sword clean through the torso of another charging opponent like a medieval knight. The man howls as he is struck, and Meg shakes him off her blade in one dismissive flick, before spinning to slice clean through the muzzle of another one's gun with a faint flash of sparks.

Then Alecto is behind her, dealing the disarmed man a precise slash across the throat, sending him tumbling to the floor. Unlike her sister, her movements are very cutting, almost methodical, with the neat deliberation of a striking serpent. It is a familiar style, though Saya cannot place how or why.

As Saya watches, Alecto torques her body sideways, evading the blow of a charging opponent, and angles her elbow sharply at his throat, snapping the larynx. The man chokes, crumpling the floor, and the blue-eyed Chiropteran queen ducks quickly as Meg's own sword comes whooshing past, lacerating the chest of another gunman charging for her.

Behind them, Saya sees two remaining gunmen, weapons raised. With a furious outcry, she hefts her sword and charges, streaking past her nieces in a violet blur to dismember heads and arms, to shred metal muzzles and mother-of-pearl handles to barely-recognizable shards. The men howl, bodies erupting blood in the path of her blade, and Saya turns to face her nieces even as they topple to the floor, spasming and shaking in death-throes.

She wipes her blade against the hem of her dress, her eyes still burning deep red. The zenith of the firefight has been reached. The vast room still flashes with red lights, and the siren still rings loud through the air. Around them, bodies lie sprawled and shattered like marionettes, limbs cut apart, arms and legs distorted at unnatural angles. Blood coats the entire surface of the floor like some gruesome scarlet carpet.

Saya frowns, then glances at Alecto. "Where'd you learn to fight that way? You weren't this quick the last time I saw you."

Alecto shrugs and gives a faint smile, wiping a smear of blood from her face. "Haji taught me."

"Haji?"

"Shyeah," Meg snorts, shaking her hair back from her own face. "What? You think he sat around playing cello with Allie all day while you were asleep?"

"I… guess not." Saya pauses, glancing in the direction of the doorways, situated on either side of the hall. "Which way?"

"Tyler's signal was coming from the left," Meg says, and glances at the scanner attached to her wrist. Within a green square, a red light blinks. "He should be down below, and— _Shit_. Hold on a second."

"What is it?" Saya asks.

Meg's eyes are narrowed, unnerved. "The signal just went out."

"What?"

"Yeah. It—it isn't supposed to. Not unless the device got crushed, or—"

Alecto flinches. "What about the earphone? Are you picking up anything?"

Meg touches the tiny black speck attached to her ear. "Same as before. Static. What about you?"

"Nothing. Aunt Saya?"

Saya shakes her head slowly; her own earpiece is unresponsive, although she head quite clearly the words of the man who'd caught Tyler, his divulgence of what he'd endured at her hand in Vietnam, his chilling designs for vengeance. She'd heard, loud and clear, the insanity roiling through his voice. It had been at the moment when he infused Tyler with Diva's blood that she and the twins had resolved to make their move.

Now, Saya's stomach twists with a sharp chill.

Could Tyler have been killed? Was he—?

From the left doorway, she hears a sudden deep rumble. Grating, harsh. Familiar. She feels her entire body go eerily still.

On either side of her, the girls stiffen. Meg flicks another uncertain glance at her scanner, and then her other hand tightens on the hilt of her sword. Alecto purses her lips, bringing her own blade up and ready, muscles tensing to strike.

"Aunt Saya," she murmurs, her voice an austere hush. "You'd better coat some blood on that sword of yours."

Saya's eyes shift sideways to regard her niece. "Why? What is that? It sounds so familiar."

"It should," Meg replies on her left. "That's the sound of a whole lotta hungry Chiropterans."

Saya's eyes narrow. "Perfect. Just what we _don't_ need."

"You don't approve of my welcoming committee, Saya?" a sudden unfamiliar voice taunts.

Saya goes rigid, raising her sword up, staring at the doorway, the source of the voice.

As she watches, shadows, innumerable quantities of them, shifting bubbling shapes, emerge from the gloom. And then she sees them. Chiropterans. Dozens and dozens of them. Hulking and grunting, their eyes glowing a sickly voracious yellow in the gloom. Rows of glistening needle teeth, strings of putrid saliva dribbling from open jaws. Textured leather hides, sharp jagged claws.

Like a melee of monstrous obscenity, a nightmare turned real, they pour into the blood-drenched hallway in a wave of disease and delirium. And leading them, like the pinnacle of the madness, is a tall man, with a cold chiseled face and a spotless white coat. Saya knows instinctively that this is the man whom she heard from Tyler's microphone. The quasi-Chevalier madman who had taken Haji from her, who had subsisted for decades on the goal to see her dead.

Her face blanches, eyes wavering in horror, when she suddenly sees the maroon spike bursting from his left hand. The motionless figure held impaled on the edge. Tyler. Unmoving, unblinking, his clothes stained almost entirely with blood, a red thread dripping from the corner of his mouth.

His body flops limply sideways, forwards and backwards, as the man waves the boy around by his arm, a grisly flag of victory.

Beside Saya, Meg's hand flies to her mouth. The scream that erupts from her throat is the sound of pure wrath and terror.

"NOOOO!"


	14. Interlude: Pas de Deux

_Interlude: Pas de Deux_

She breathed slowly, shakily, coming down from the dizzying peak of a sonata's vortex. Sweat clinging to tangled tendrils of hair, beading a flushed forehead and lust-pinkened cheeks. Her eyes were hazy, lashes half-shuttered as she slowly licked swollen coral lips, discrete glimmerings of a smile flitting across the corners. Her hands lay comatose, languidly stroking where only seconds before, they'd been jittering, scrabbling, clawing at the pale smooth back below them, rosin snagging against cello strings.

Haji's skin was decorated with her resultant scratches, fading slowly like a secret symphony etched deep into his skin. She felt the short, ragged gasps of his breathing against her sweat-glazed breast, the subtle tremors across his frame as he sank from his own delirious crescendo. When he finally raised his head to meet her gaze, his hair fell in dissolute tangles around his face, framing languid heavy-lidded eyes and a mouth with a subtle quirk along the edges.

His body was always warmest at this stage, almost as warm as hers, as though each time, her heat siphoned into him, in tandem with the mounting urgency, the shared pleasure.

Smiling, Saya closed her eyes and stretched under him, slow and indolent as a sleepy cat. She basked in the delicious sensation of her bare skin pressed to his, every nerve and cell sweetly thrumming, the vibrant overtones of a _festivamente_. It was these in-between moments, the Now, that she relished more than anything; moments where time seemed to stop for the enthralling fraction of a second, where nothing mattered but the decelerating rhythm of her's and Haji's breathing, the torpid diminuendo of their shared pulse, the feel of his hair wrapped like silk around her fingers.

She felt Haji shift to roll away, but her hands immediately tightened, holding him in place. As a rule, he kept his full weight on her for only the initial few seconds before withdrawing, as if worried that he was too heavy for her. But Saya relished that feeling too, the warm strenuous sensation of being pinned under his weight, of feeling completely inert and possessed, his arms bracketing her like the elegant purfling on the glossiest costliest cello.

" _I left the quails in the oven, y'know_ …" she said, her tone that of idle self-reproach. " _They've probably burnt by now. Kai said I was just supposed to keep 'em in for ten minutes… or something_."

" _Hm_ …" Haji's resultant hum, emanating from deep in his throat, indicated a dismally low concern for burnt quails, or Kai's instructions, or the ensuing tirade that would predictably follow.

Recurrence often begot indifference—although in this case, it should have begotten remedial. After all, this wasn't the first time Kai had left Saya and Haji to manage the restaurant, and returned to find the unbefitting 'Closed' sign on the door, phones left unanswered, tables messy, and the stench of overcooked food gushing from the frying-pans and ovens.

All this, and Saya and Haji conspicuously absent.

" _Goddammit_!" Kai had howled, the last time he'd returned with groceries to a kitchen submerged in smoke and burnt fish-filet. " _I leave for a measly twenty minutes and you can't even watch the fish for me! You'll run me out of business at this rate! And end up setting the whole place on fire!_ "

Saya and Haji had listened to the recriminations, Haji neutral-faced but with something akin to embarrassment shading his eyes, and Saya ducking a beet-red face to study her own hands twisting with the hem of her dress. The twins had watched from the doorway, hands over their mouths to suppress laughter.

After an entire lifetime of listening to Kai lecture them for being irresponsible unmanageable brats, it had been funny to know that their Dear Aunt was even more of a lost cause, incapable of being left unsupervised for barely five minutes without gallivanting off someplace with her Chevalier.

" _We… tried to watch the food, Kai. We really did_ ," Saya mumbled. " _But I guess we sort of… lost track of time_."

" _But you guys were in the bedroom the whole time. There's a clock there too_ ," Meg teased from the doorway, prompting Saya to shoot her a half-sullen, half-mortified glare and for Haji to narrow his eyes in the look of frigid death.

Kai grit his teeth, red-faced as if forcing back a primal scream. " _Jesus Christ! It's like I'm living in a houseful of juveniles_!"

" _Aw, lighten up, Kai_ ," Meg drawled. _"Maybe one day_ you'll _find someone who'll make you burn fish. If you did something about your dress sense, that is. And those wrinkles. Y'know, I hear great things these days about the plastic surgeons downtown—"_

At this point Kai had already whirled to redirect his tantrum on the brasher twin, leaving Meg to shriek with laughter and swoop upstairs, out of his reach, out of the presence of her smirking sister, and their aunt who sat blushing like a schoolgirl caught kissing her date on the front porch.

Since hers and Haji's giddy mid-sky tryst at the opera, Saya's days and nights had begun to meld together, a heated frenetic daze without rational coordinates. Suddenly, it was as though she and her chevalier couldn't get enough of being alone, regardless of the hour of the day or night—an insatiable _joie de vivre_ that wrought chaos on the sequence of Saya's daily chores, and on the orderliness of Omoro in general.

In the daylight hours, every minute she spent in Haji's presence, under the eye of Kai or Lewis or Mao or the twins, was an exquisite churning torture. The long-stoppered lust between them had volcanoed, at long last, into an endless propulsive torrent that blinded in its intensity—leaving everything else chaotic and smoky in its wake.

The distant looks and faraway smiles they'd once shared were no longer enough to tide them over. Innocently-held hands and chaste embraces no longer served to express the full depth of love and longing.

Saya would spend the afternoons working in the restaurant with a hallucinating glow to her eyes, listlessly stirring soup in pots, scrubbing dishes a little too jerkily, spilling tea, and blushing everytime Kai asked her if something was wrong. Haji would play his cello in the backyard with a kind of erratic, barely-contained impatience, each note striking just a little too harshly, each pizzicato just a tad too forceful.

His silent exterior betrayed nothing of the yearning that constantly simmered between them, but Saya could hear it, could sense it, coming to life in the music, which had always been Haji's sole conduit to siphon and exemplify his thoughts and emotions.

" _Haji's been playing real strange these days_ ," Kai remarked once, listening to the heavy notes serenading the kitchen air. " _Poor bastard. He must've been sitting in the sun too long or something."_

" _Yeah. Or… something,"_ Saya mumbled, and bent to retrieve a fallen dishrag and hide her burning face.

During the day, she and Haji learned to utilize every spare moment, to draw out each vagrant second in a heated _pas de deux_. Saya learnt to dissimulate, to make excuses to run downtown on errands—trips that ended behind the store alley in feverish kisses and overwhelming full-clothed embraces. There were nights when, once sure Kai and the girls were fast asleep, she and Haji would swoop past the window and across night sky to a deserted shingle of beach.

No sound there but of the crashing silver waves, the wild hammering of her own heart, as Saya gulped in cool salty air and felt the wet powdery sand under her fingers, lips seeking Haji's in a dizzying ebb and flow analogous to tide.

There were evenings lost to the forest on the town's outskirts, where, cut off from all sense of time and place, Saya would find herself laughing and frolicking as she had during the ancient days in the Zoo, playing impromptu games of hide-and-seek with Haji among the ferns and trees. Only this time they both were faster, sharper than any human could hope to be, each sense keenly attuned, each muscle agile. And this time, Haji was rewarded with more than just an extra sampling of Saya's blackcurrant jam on the possibility of catching her.

But the intensity of what raged between them was always tinged with an edge of apprehension, with the ardor of a goodbye. After the hardships and traumas they both had endured, there was an undertone of anxiety that fed the passion just atop it, perhaps fanning it just that much hotter. They knew better than to take any of this for granted; indeed, a part of them still feared that at any moment lightning would blaze down between them, ripping them away from each other.

And with each passing week, the awareness of Saya's next Long Sleep swelled like a tumor between them, a tumor they could not escape, but could only push to the back of their minds, to concentrate wholly on the Now.

And in that Now, there was the blooming sweetness of discovery, of wonder, evoking the same softness as a cello bow played _sul tasto_.

With no one in the past to teach them, school them on the subject of love, they now plunged into the premise hand-in-hand with the exhilarated curiosity of children. Often, Saya likened the fanatical craving between them to their shared ardor in the early days for the cello, for its music. A million different techniques to perfect, a hundred pastiches to try out, kaleidoscopes of compositions and styles to be sampled and memorized, all leaving the performers riddled in urgency and longing

The pace of each convergence between them varied as if in tandem to the atmosphere, the mood. There were nights when the passion raged fast and frenetic, _bellicoso_ and _con brio_ arias made flesh. Helplessly-stifled whimpers set to the velocity of forceful unremitting thrusts, to nails puncturing pale skin in lust-fierce inscriptions, and lean hands braceleting her wrists, her hips, in bruised gradations of desperation. Moans and motion between them translating into an orchestra's _incalzando,_ accelerating in speed and force, culminating into a shattering vortex of sensation, _son et lumiere_ of the mind and body.

And there were nights when time seemed to stretch deliciously, a languorous and drawn-out _teneramente_. Saya crafted a detailed inventory of Haji's body, top to toe, learning to draw from him the same subtle vibrations, the same teeth-clenched sounds, as from the cello she'd haughtily tutored him to play in the early days. Softly-sliding _glissandos_ and playfully-plucking _pizzicatos_ once practiced on bows and strings, now implemented on his flesh to electrifying effect.

Haji in turn, always the more adroit cellist (this fact _still_ made her fume), crafted techniques to explore the multiple capacities of her pleasure, drinking in her every sound and reaction to restructure it anew. Pale hands devising caresses that drew from her the same musical sighs as an operatic cantabile, intuiting tremors, gasps and movements with the same acumen of a wavering _vibrato_ pressed under his fingertips. Excruciatingly-unhurried tempos contrived during lovemaking, exquisite cadences that drew her bit by bit to a wrenching series of breathless convulsing pinnacles—the sound of her own pleading sobbing voice an exotic new melody, entirely in his power to compose.

And with each pinwheeling week, as her Long Sleep edged nearer, these were the memories they hoarded the closest, a literal intertwining within the sinews and the mind. In the wake of their inevitable separation, a long murk of drowning between brief gasps of fresh oxygen, this was a Now that they could exist in, solely and entirely for each other, where time froze for a few moments and the world as it was ceased to matter, to exist at all.

These were the melodies that Saya dreamt of, when she slumbered again for three decades in her tomb, and the symphonies that Haji jealously guarded during his dreamless sleepless vigil, spewing on his cello phantom facsimiles of the maddening chaos within his mind.

And so it remained, like a silent and torturous pact between them, until Saya's next impatiently-anticipated Awakening—a clandestine concerto brimming with emotion, with longing, left unfinished like some brilliant composition lost to time and mortality.

It was a secret shared solely between the musician and the instrument, a cherished melody turned _tacet_ to relentless fate, brought to life only by the heat of memory, and by the ardent promise of reunion.


	15. Devil's Pet

Haji thrashes against the manacles like a pinioned eel, hard metal digging like a vise into his bloody flesh. The shackles refuse to yield; he can feel his arms and shoulders aching from the exertion, throat parched from thirst and terror. He knows he is on the verge of passing out. The cell around him blurs and darkens intermittently, an eerie spiccato strobe.

Relentless starvation and torture have taken their toll. His strength, his very will to _move_ , dangles on a tenuous Chantilly string.

Weakness renders each sinew brittle, a friable plaster mid-crumble. He mentally rails at himself for his own powerlessness, mind bouncing back and forth with every filthy Roma and Gallic and Anglo-Saxon blasphemy his extensive memory can dredge up. Anger and fear makes his flesh race as though awash with filthy black arachnoids.

And embedded beneath that, deep within his marrow, is a vibration like the perlon core on struck cello string. A sensation of _awakeness_ , of knowledge.

He has felt it before, and felt it often, ever since becoming a Chevalier. The invisible, irresistible compulsion that overtakes him whenever he senses Saya's presence, regardless of the distance.

The very sensation that tugs him to her, a hook to his vitals, with her every Awakening. The same sensation that allowed him, that distant night in New York, to glide through the luminous spires and skyscrapers, and retrieve her from Solomon Goldsmith's penthouse. To ward off Phantom, within that dank Vietnam alleyway, when he accosted Saya with his theatrical regalia and voracious ravening eyes.

And again and again before that.

For each time he has sensed her, felt her being threatened, he has been there to help her.

Which is why his very soul seethes in frustration now, at this wretched state of immobility.

Saya is _here_ , in this very building. He can _feel_ her, practically hear the synapses of each nerve under her skin, firing up with adrenaline. He can almost sense the tempo of her heartbeat, an accelerating electrifying tattoo. God, he can almost taste her _blood_ , feel the quality of her emotion tingeing the air, a drop of ink released in water. Wary, afraid, angry, and so completely alone…

Haji's eyes snap wide open.

_Saya…_

_I have to help her…_

He strains against the manacles, harder, gritting his teeth. But the dense metal holds firm, cutting into his wrists, streaming blood. Haji gasps, but persists. He is willing to sacrifice severed muscle and broken bones if it means getting out of here. In the face of Saya confronting jeopardy, pain is forever an immaterial factor to him.

He has known many gradations of pain throughout his lifetime; the pain of a childhood drenched in poverty, the pain of separation from his parents on the rationale of too many mouths to feed. The pain of transforming against his will into a monster that could be neither understood nor coerced, and then seething too, in the anguish that this monster struck fear into the one person he desperately wanted to protect.

The pain loving someone more than his own life—someone who was sadly more enamored with death than living, who viewed her own existence as a blight on mankind and asked him to kill her with his own hands. Her silent accomplice in suicide, her welcome killer, but never her lover, never her friend.

Strange, how far they had come from that point. Farther still than Haji would ever have dreamed possible, given how they both had started out.

The entire matrix of their relationship, of Saya wading from the nadir of despair, toward the glimmering traces of light and life, had been based on both their abilities to persevere, and on the unexpected hands both human friendships and fate itself had offered them.

This wonderful renaissance in the shape of a reprieve, a second chance to live their lives free from shadow and despondency.

Haji cannot allow that second chance to slip so easily through his grasp now.

He feels the livid crackle of his own flesh splitting, rending apart as he concentrates, a scaly red-and-black hide blooming within the layers of smooth white flesh. It is not the first time he has unleashed his Chiropteran facet, full-out—but it is the first time he has done so during one of Saya's Awakenings.

Even after the war ended, he had avoided disclosing that aspect of himself, especially in front of Saya, especially because he knew it brought back chokingly-bitter reminders to her.

During her Long Sleep however, there have been times and moments for the unleashing—to ward off the occasional pestering human gangs that waylay him on travels, or during a serious sparring session with Meg and Alecto—probably the only two people who have seen how he truly looks beneath his human guise.

He can still recall the first time both girls convinced him, unwillingly, to let it loose. Unlike their beloved aunt, they grew up embracing their Chiropteran nature, not reviling it. They neither winced nor screamed at the exposé, although he still remembered Alecto staring at him for days after, with the kind of uneasy interest of witnessing a hurricane; Meg had been conversely excited, dancing around him and teasing, " _Come on, Haji. One more time_. _Let's see the mean face just one more time! You know you want to!"_

This situation is wholly different. But it is the only option Haji has left.

He has attempted these transformations before, when he has tried to break from his cell during the early days. But in each instance, the cell had been horded within seconds by security operatives and blazing electric prods. He has never been able to concentrate for long. Sedation is almost always inevitable.

He keeps one ear pricked for intruding footsteps now, but there are none. He knows better than to let the opportunity slip.

He feels the transformation overtake him suddenly, mid-breath, like an electric current. His flesh crawls, tightens as though housing a million slithering reptiles inside; each muscle goes rigid, from the very tips of his fingers to the filmy skin over his eyelids. Gasping, he arches his head back with the effort, the tendons on his throat rising like textured bridge struts.

When the sinewy maroon-and-ebony hide erupts through, it seems as though he is a snake shedding skin, peeling gauzy pastel film to unfetter a chilling demonic _magnum opus_ deep within, the Devil's very own pet.

At the same moment, Haji hears, feels, a distant explosion somewhere above him. The walls tremble and the floor quakes. He feels the very foundations of the cell rock back and forth like gelatin. In the next instant, a sudden burst of strength from deep within surges forth; the manacles come shattering off just as he reaches the complete effect of his transformation with a half-stifled snarl.

And then, wings unfurl and spread, claws curl to talons, and a set of eyes glow a bloodthirsty red, just as the power in the factory is cut off, and the cell is plunged into eerie darkness.

When Haji breaks out from the barred door, he has only one name reverberating through his mind.

_Saya…_


	16. Interlude: Time

Soft white flakes drifted down, glazing the dark streets in ethereal film. Snow hung shimmering in the air, a delicate sugar web that misted the streetlights to hazy orbs of red and yellow, blurred the buildings into dark angular columns. Well past midnight; streets vacant and few cars droning across the dry white streets. Their sounds did not carry, as if the frost shroud muted even them.

Saya, seated before the glass crenellations of a wide rose-window, sighed and tipped her face to the sky. The snow was a cool bite on her lips.

In this methodical age of machinery and expediency, volts of neon and incomprehensible tangles of wire, Christmas, or at least variations of it, was still celebrated in many parts of the world. It was something Saya found vaguely consoling, an immutable-mutual humanity, harmony, still intact—but Alecto always scoffed that it wasn't human consciousness that had kept it alive. It was capitalism.

" _There's no 'peace on earth, love all men' about it anymore_ ," she told Saya. " _It's more, Big Malls, Big Sales, Big Profits_."

Saya smiled ruefully. " _I gather you're not a December person_."

" _Yeah, well_. _Just call me the Last DJ_."

Saya chuckled. " _I think you were born in the wrong era, Allie_. _You should've been around in the sixties._ "

" _What? And live without cellphones and Internet? I think not. I just don't like how they kill the gist of everything, is all."_

" _You know, if it's as bad as you think now, its only going to get worse in the future."_

" _That's true,"_ Alecto mused. _"But maybe someday I'll find myself in an era where things have changed."_

" _Maybe. Although that sounds kind of impossible."_

" _Not really. I can wait."_ Alecto gave a canny smile. _"Time, auntie Saya. That's the one thing I've got unlimited stores of."_

" _So you're saying if you wait long enough, maybe things will get better?"_

" _In most cases, yeah."_ Alecto paused, adding more confidentially. _"It did in your case too, right? After the war, I mean."_

Saya paused, brow knitted a scant inch.

 _"Yeah,"_ she said softly. _"It sort of did."_

Smiling distantly, Saya watched her niece now, shrieking and whooping across the snow with Megaera. They were showing off, using their Chiropteran speed. Swooping across snow in blurs, kicking up white powder and pelting each other with snowballs and taunts. Their bright red and blue sweaters were vibrant against the milky backdrop.

In this lonely neighborhood, there were no inhabitants to bother them. Just a vast white courtyard facing an old Gothic Church. The church itself was an ancient crepuscular structure, dark and striking, all elegant arches and sweeping ledges, mystic gargoyles and rising wrought-iron spires, stark against the night sky.

Saya sat perched at the highest ledge, wrapped up in her thick maroon coat, overlooking the grounds. In the muted nightglow, the painted-glass window behind her was brilliant with hues of red, green, yellow and blue. It was like a vibrant rebuke to the frigid stillness all around her, an antithesis captured in circle.

And concurrently, a visual illustration of the lively shouts and laughter from her nieces below, vivacity and emotion infused into color.

Haji sat beside Saya, elbow propped on an upraised knee, the other leg dangling with careless elegance over the ledge. An open bottle of _Veuve Cliquot_ was balanced beside him. Without bothering with glasses, he and Saya drank from the neck, passing it slowly between them, the wine heavy and velvety like a warm kiss in snowfall.

" _I can't believe they still celebrate Christmas_ ," Saya remarked now. " _It's been so many years, but some things never change. Meg tells me there are restaurants downtown that even serve la bûche de Noël_. _Just like how we used to have back at the Zoo."_ She turned, smiling at Haji. _"Do you remember all the Christmases back then, Haji? When we'd leave wooden shoes by the fireplace and Joel would order them stuffed with fruits and candies for us? I always knew it was Joel who did it, not Père Noël."_

Haji nodded, mouth lifting just the slightest along the corners. " _True. Just like you always told me there was no such thing as_ _Père Fouettard. Which in turn meant no punishments. And then you'd steal cakes and pastries from the kitchens and eat them hidden behind the garden hedges."_

Saya smiled fondly, lips full and red in the crisp snowfall. _"I remember. Joel had explicitly forbidden us from touching the food until the feast was ready. But for me, forgiveness was always more easily obtained then permission. I would tell you to keep watch for anyone nearby, and then I'd creep into the kitchen and take tartlets out from the ovens. Whenever we heard the cook coming, we'd run out and duck behind the rose bushes. I was always afraid someone would be able to hear us laughing."_

" _The cook couldn't. He was deaf from one ear."_

" _Oh right. Remember that one time I was trying to sneak past him out the door? I bumped into the table and dropped a bowl of cream lying there. The sound was so loud I nearly jumped out of my skin. But the cook didn't even turn around. I took it as a sign, grabbed the pastries and ran."_

" _Yes. And once the coast was clear, we split them by the briarwood patch."_ Haji arched a brow, a subtle, playful reproach. _"Although you always took the bigger pieces for yourself."_

" _What? Oh, but you were so much smaller than me. How much could you possibly eat?"_

He gave her a subtle smirk. _"Touché."_

Saya giggled, her breath emerging in gauzy white plumes, warmth melting to gossamer frost. But Haji's own cool breath stayed the same, imperceptible. Smiling, fainter than a whisper, he passed the wine bottle to Saya. She took a thoughtful sip, gazing past the laughing twins, toward the faceless emotionless hulks of the city beyond.

Cut off from all thrumming societal bustle, from the clamor of humanity that they dwelt alongside but could never integrate with, she felt oddly safe and free, made so by the nightfall, the veil of snow, and by the tall silent man at her side.

" _This is how it's always going to be, isn't it_?" she remarked now. " _Us on the outside, looking in at those people_."

Haji inclined his head, part agreement, part curiosity. Saya's tone wasn't bleak, merely abstracted. Her eyes had the faraway quality of a child trying to unravel a problematic puzzle.

" _Things have changed so much since we were young_ ," she commented. "W _ith every Awakening, it's like the world I'm in has changed even more. Cultures, traditions, people, all completely altered. But not me. Not us. We'll always stay—"_

" _Even we change, Saya,"_ Haji said quietly. _"As things in our lives change, so do we. Even if it only manifests on the inside."_

" _Mm_." Saya took another sip, languid and heavy, then turned and pressed her lips to Haji's, passing the wine between them. His mouth was cold and soft in the snow, but gradually warmed against hers. With her brow against his cheekbone, she whispered. " _Sometimes I just wonder, you know_ …"

" _Wonder what_?"

" _How long our lives will last this way. Not in the sense that they might end, but that they never_ will _end._ _We're the last of our kind. I know I shouldn't think about it too much, but whenever I do… when I think of spending decades asleep, and then waking up, each time, to something strange and unfamiliar… it frightens me. I'll never be like the humans. None of us will. We're creatures existing out of time."_

Haji tilted his head but didn't answer. She allowed him to drape his arm around her shoulders, draw her closer. Half to comfort her, half to curve her away from the subject. Pondering her own immortality did not do wonders for Saya's mental health, and they both knew it.

" _Saya, the world may change, but I promise, I will always be waiting for you,"_ he said gently. _"Regardless of what happens around us, regardless of what the future might hold. That is one thing that will remain unchanged."_

Saya smiled, quiet and bittersweet, and put her hand over his. She wore big wool mittens, full and formless like a little girl's; beads of snow shone diamond-bright on the fuzzy material. " _That's actually part of what worries me_ ," she whispered.

Haji's eyes were on her, soft, inquiring. " _What does_?"

" _When I'm in my Long Sleep, I know the girls keep you company. Everytime I wake up, I can see, sense, that you three have gotten closer and closer. Like family. You're used to being around each other. You obviously love each other. But Haji… sooner or later, the girls are going to go into their own Long Sleeps. What will you do then?"_

Haji paused, then glanced slowly back down at the squealing twins, two bright blurs of red and blue. When he spoke, his voice had a hesitation that was almost sister to grief. " _It's… not a matter I've looked forward to. Nor one I've discussed with them_."

" _But it will happen, sooner or later. What will you do then? I hate the thought of you going without… without any love or contact, for thirty years. Always waiting for me to wake up. The more I think about it, the more I feel like it's much too unfair to you."_

Haji glanced back at Saya, and favored her with one of his slow, sidelong smiles. " _Saya, haven't you forgotten that I spent other eras during your Long Sleep alone? During the war?_ "

She nodded, somber and self-castigating. " _I know. But that was… a very long time ago. I was so wrapped up in trying to kill Diva. All I knew was my own grief, my own suffering. It never even occurred to me, how you must have felt. Why you were with me. But… things are different now, aren't they, Haji? Very different."_

" _Yes… and no."_

" _What do you mean?"_

He brought a cool hand to her cheek, then her hair, smoothing away the snowflakes twined in radiant droplets through them. " _It's true, that when you experience anything good, it makes the deprivation all the harder to bear_ ," he said gently. " _But… none of that changes the way I feel about you. It never changed during the war, and it won't now_. _In a way,_ _the time during_ _your Long Sleep makes me love you more than ever_."

Saya smiled, this time with an edge of slyness. " _Meaning, if I was with you all the time, you'd get sick of me fast_."

Haji blinked, not realizing she was intentionally misconstruing. " _No, that isn't what I_ —"

Saya giggled and impulsively kissed his cheek. " _It's okay, Haji. I know what you meant_." Her eyes twinkled under shaded eyelashes. " _Meg's right. You're so much fun to mess with_. _No wonder she's always teasing you_."

Haji's mouth quirked just the slightest along the corners. His fingers, curling spiderlike along her waist, slid momentarily under her sweater to the shock of warm bare flesh beneath. Cool fingertips, verging on icy, pressing in a butterfly's brush to her skin, sending a million tiny nerves pulsing messages across her body. Saya jerked and gasped.

" _True_ ," he murmured. " _But unlike Meg,_ _you run the risk of full reprisal. With interest."_

Saya smiled, her doleful mood lifting in the midst of this lighthearted banter. Her Chevalier was many things, but he was seldom playful. But with time, and some cajoling, Saya intended to work on that situation.

" _Time_ ," she realized then, suddenly.

Haji looked curiously at her. " _What_?"

" _Time_ ," she said softly. " _It's the one thing people like us will never be without. The world will keep changing forever, and so will we, but time's the one thing we have in excess. The one thing that we'll always have on our side."_ She sighed, adding, " _Even though that isn't always a good thing._ "

Haji shook his head. " _That depends entirely on what that time is invested in, Saya. Time invested in causing pain, in causing death, begets more pain and death. And time invested in life and hope…"_

"… _Leads to more life and hope,"_ Saya finished thoughtfully. _"Because time changes things too. What goes up must come down. It's like a cycle. Out of death comes life. Out of perseverance come rewards._ ' _Come what come may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day.'"_

She had been quoting Shakespeare's _Macbeth_ , one of Joel's favorite plays. Haji smiled in recognition.

His lips pressed lightly to her brow. _"Yes. And that is the one thing that allows me to endure all the years during your Long Sleep, Saya. If nothing else, I have time on my side."_

Saya smiled gently. " _Don't forget, you'll always have me too. When I'm there and even when I'm not_."

An answering smile bloomed on Haji's lips; his gaze was soft and wistful. " _I never forget that_."

" _Hell, neither do we_ ," came a mischievous voice.

Saya and Haji turned to look at Meg and Alecto, who had invited themselves up onto the ledge during their elders' distraction. The two girls were grinning widely, pink-cheeked from the cold and their exertions, hair loose and grayed from rolling in the snow. They both held their hands behind their backs, their postures deferential, almost angelic.

Except their broad toothy grins, which were anything but.

" _You forgot one very important part in your epiphany, aunt Saya_ ," Meg remarked now.

Haji simply narrowed his eyes, peering suspiciously past the girl's midsection. " _What are you hiding behind your back_?"

Meg didn't answer. When Haji tried to look closer, she danced out of his reach.

" _What important part_?" Saya asked her, bewildered.

" _The part about time_ ," Alecto supplied, and her eyes lit up with laughter. Simultaneously, both girls drew chunky orb-shaped snowballs from behind their backs. " _It's a bad idea to waste it_."

It was words that Saya would take to heart, and much more staunchly than she took the icy barrage of snowballs to hers and Haji's faces. Even as she shot to her feet and chased after her cackling squealing nieces, bristling in retaliation, she understood that time, like the kind she had been given now, was finally at her own disposal to use, to make the most of as she saw fit.

And as long as she had her family with her, as long as she had Haji and the girls, irrespective of circumstance, regardless of past and of future, the time spent with them would never be worthless, and never be wasted.

She was a creature existing out of time, yes. But with her family around, it would never be the only thing she existed for.

* * *


	17. Icarus

**CW: Violence/Gore**

* * *

Saya gapes at the man standing before her, at the heart of the Chiropteran horde, brandishing her niece's Chevalier like a gruesome cannibal's banner.

Tyler is motionless and pale, no doubt from all the blood he has lost. Dark splotches emblazon his clothes in a lurid tie-dye pattern.

Saya cannot tell, from this vantage, whether he is even alive.

Beside her, Meg's eyes blaze red. She takes a step forward and shrieks, " _Put him down_!"

The white-coated man, Craig Sanborn, cocks his head disdainfully. "Ah, Saya. This must be your darling niece. Diva's daughter. Do either of them know about how you stabbed their mother and sent her to hell with your blood?"

Saya never has, but her nieces already know of the entire searing debacle, from Kai, from David and Julia. They know what happened that night, and, although robbed of visual memory, they have forgiven Saya long ago, which is one of the many reasons she has vowed to shield them from the same terrible destiny as Diva.

Which is why she steps in front of Meg now, and levels her gleaming sword and burning eyes at Sanborn. "Let Tyler go. I already know it's me you're after."

Sanborn's lips curve, a cruel smile that never reaches his eyes. "Then you have even robbed me the privilege of introducing myself to you personally. It's funny, Saya. Even in my moment of triumph, you take some small satisfaction away from me."

Meg interposes in a growl, "Fuck you and your stupid speeches! Put Ty down or I swear to God I'll cut—"

She is aborted mid-sentence when Sanborn lifts his other hand and casually releases another red spike at her. Meg moves to evade the shard, but it plunges into her arm at the last vital second.

Screaming, she is hurled back, flat on the blood-splattered floor, pinned down like some gory _hors de oeuvre_ on a red toothpick.

"Meg!" Alecto cries, and moves to help her sister.

But Meg has already ripped the spike out of her arm in a jerky, livid motion. She takes barely a moment to regroup before she snatches up her sword and charges at Sanborn with an enraged snarl, a wounded lioness pouncing at her prey.

Before she can bring the sword down on Sanborn's throat, one of the many Chiropterans howls and lunges for her. They collide in mid-air. Meg is flung back against the floor, the Chiropteran on top of her. The creature roars, a guttural ululation of glee, and snaps monstrous jaws for Meg's throat.

Grunting, Meg brings up her sword at the last moment, catching the Chiropteran between the teeth. One quick press of the ampoule laden with Saya's blood, and a streak of red flashes across the blade.

Meg grits her teeth and forces her sword backward, cutting through the beast's mouth, sawing an eerie Chelsea Smile across its jaws.

The Chiropteran sputters and howls, Saya's blood mingling with its cut flesh. The crystallization is instantaneous, the entire massive body stiffening, graying, cracks forming in a relentless pattern that leave tumbling shards in their path.

Meg shoves the shattering monster off and leaps to her feet, sword raised, swooping again for Sanborn.

Who, without batting an eyelid, flings Tyler's body at her like a Frisbee.

Tyler crashes into Meg hard, and the two fly backward, against one of the blood-slippery walls, slumping in an ungainly tangle. Meg winces and touches the back of her head, then freezes at the lanky shape sprawled across her, completely immobile.

"Tyler…" she whispers, and cradles his head with trembling hands. She begins to shake him, her voice tight and wavering. "Ty! Wake up! Come on!"

Tyler's head flops limply side-to-side; Meg's eyes widen and her shaking intensifies. Abruptly, a sharp jolt brings him to. He groans and blinks, staring hazily up at Meg. The Chiropteran Queen's face contorts, cheeks wet with tears of fear and relief.

"Ty!" she sobs, tightening her grip on his shoulders. "Ty, are you okay? Say something!"

"Meg?" Tyler grimaces. "Relax. I'm… fine." His lips flicker in a grin. "Wouldya ease off, baby? You're… kinda chokin' me here."

"How sweet," Sanborn sneers. "Although, in a sense, astounding. I really did think I'd killed him. He lost more than enough blood. The boy must be a persistent weed indeed. He'll need to be trimmed quickly."

He gestures to the Chiropterans flanking him. Like a trained set of guard dogs, the closest two roar and swoop for the pair. In split-seconds, two glints of silver and a sudden effluence of gray cracks stop them short. As the Chiropterans crumble to swift granite chunks, Saya and Alecto are revealed standing before Meg and Tyler, swords lifted and eyes glowing red and blue.

"You're not attacking another member of my family while I'm alive," Saya says, ominously low. "Where is Haji? What have you done with him?"

Sanborn's mouth contorts. "Oh, your faithful Chevalier. You needn't worry about him. He's in a good place. Better, in any case, than _yours_."

No sooner do the words leave his mouth when another Chiropteran bellows and leaps toward Saya. The creature hangs suspended for the searing heartbeat moment, so high airborne that Saya can see the entire brawny body—the curved claws and dagger fangs and feral yellow eyes.

She brings up her sword just as the ravening monster plummets at her. A flick of her thumb across the designated groove, and her blood races in a crimson flare. She lets loose a savage battlecry and swings the weapon sideways, slicing the beast neatly in half as easily as a knife cuts through cheese.

Blood sprays across the air, splashing Saya's face and arms. A thousand crystallized chunks disperse all around her, striking and rebounding off the floor in a parody of bleeding sleet. Saya stands firm in the center of the downpour, eyes narrowed, glowing an even deeper shade of red than the blood-effluvium.

Her gaze never leaves Sanborn's.

"I told you," she says. "Haji. Where is he? Tell me right now."

Sanborn smirks, but his eyes are icy with an unfathomable hatred. "You're really in no position, Saya, to make demands to me."

"In that case, I'll kill you and find him myself."

And without prelude or warning, she hefts her blade and charges for Sanborn. A swarm of Chiropterans swoop to block her path. Saya's sword sweeps out in a silver fan, whipping across the melee. A spray of blood issues behind her as she severs limbs before the beasts even see her coming.

The ensuing shower of crystallized shards is like an unfurling carpet of death.

Another pair of Chiropterans swoops at Saya. Then Alecto is there, fast as lightning, swinging her blade in a precise curve of arm-arc and sword-thrust, chopping the beasts down to size, inducing them from paralysis to stony dissolution.

Saya sees a third Chiropteran bounding for her headlong. Her trademark sword cuts a gleaming arc as she raises it over her head, bringing it down in a staggering sideways motion, sending the Chiropteran's arm flying off, the remaining body tumbling sideways and crashing into one of the generators along the wall.

Sparks cascade, a glittering cataract. Saya hears a hum from the building's generators. The machine overloads. There is a resounding explosion that rocks the facility. Above them, the flashing red lights flicker on and off, and then go dim, drowning the entire hall into shadow.

The amber glow of emergency lights takes their place. They plunge everything into a sickly yellow hue, accentuating the garish glowing eyes of the Chiropterans all around, and the sheen of mad hatred that exudes from Sanborn's gaze, an inferno incarnate.

Saya moves to swing at Sanborn. He evades her fluidly, without apparent effort. A savage backhand sends Saya flying to crash against the wall; she grunts but recovers fast, landing on her feet and charging for the fanatical quasi-chevalier.

Sanborn extends his unsightly gray hand and lets fly a volley of spikes at Saya; the barrage streaks for her like a thousand scarlet javelin.

Saya dodges them swiftly, balletic, graceful, as though participating in a dance. The deadly spires whiz past her ears, a few slicing her arms, her cheeks and legs where evasion does not transmute fast enough.

She closes in on Sanborn with a ferocious outcry, sword raised high to deal the _coup de grace_ —until Sanborn grabs her throat by his monstrous Chiropteran arm, seizing her in mid-air and snapping her like a towel.

Saya grunts and struggles to free herself. In the next instant breath explodes in a _whoosh_ from her lungs as Sanborn slams her into the wall with bone-crushing force.

Her sword clatters from her hand, falling to the floor with a harsh ring-and-thud, as though it is calling for her.

"Saya!" Alecto shouts, and races toward her.

Three Chiropterans leap forward to waylay her, ravening and slavering. Four more have cornered Meg and Tyler, still at their spot by the wall; the commingling growls and snarls roll like an impending avalanche across the air.

Gasping, Saya scrabbles tooth and claw at the leathery hand pressed to her throat, cutting off her air. Her eyes are still red, fixated to the sneering, maniacal face looming before her.

Sanborn smiles grotesquely, breathing hard and erratic. His fingers tighten on Saya's throat.

"I waited, Saya," he growls between his teeth. "I waited decades and decades to have this opportunity. A chance to seek you out at last, to finish you with my bare hands. You took away anything in my life that was worth meaning. You pursued your selfish, heartless quest to kill Diva, without ever pausing to consider the damage you caused to everyone around you. All the pain you left in your wake. Tell me? Why should you deserve to live and be happy, when you should be spending every second roasting in eternal hellfire with Diva? You're no better than she, and you deserve just as gruesome a fate."

Black spots pulse before Saya's eyes. She chokes from want of precious oxygen, her struggles waning against the merciless hand that crushes her to the wall.

"I'm… sorry," she grits out. "I—didn't know what I did to you. I only wanted to end the war. I didn't mean to hurt— so many people."

Sanborn's grip turns bone-pulping. Saya's mouth opens in a ragged scream, choked off by the fingers knotted like lariats into her aching throat.

"You destroyed every shred of my life, Saya," Sanborn hisses. "Anything I ever held dear. And the worst part was, you weren't even _thinking_ about me. No. Everything precious to me, you shredded apart with the same indifference of stepping on an insect. I wasn't even important enough to warrant hatred in your eyes. I was just another body to hack apart, another soul to condemn and torment."

"I'm—sorry—"

" _Sorry_? Does your being _sorry_ change anything? Do you think your being _sorry_ will erase the fact that you killed so many people? That you brought suffering to so many lives? It's not even those victims you're sorry for—your only concern is for yourself. _Your_ remorse. _Your_ dilemmas. You never once stopped to think, in any broader spectrum, about anyone else who suffered as much as you. Who suffered even _more_ than you!"

Sanborn's grip is so tight Saya fears her head will explode in blood. She no longer has breath left to respire, to speak or scream. Her eyes are wide and wavering, twin supernovas of imminent asphyxia.

" _Saya_!" she hears Meg scream, but her voice is distant, watery and garbled as though she is drowning.

The world around her seems submerged in the same murk; her vision is dimming, rippling, sound and scent fading away in the midst of a gentle, chillingly serene hush. She can feel the cloak of death taking hold. It is familiar and soothing, like an old lover she knew so warmly, who was so much a part of her, that she never even forgot about forgetting him.

Funny; she believed she'd shaken off this intimacy forever.

But it returns to her now as though ever-present, the softly-silenced breathing, a dull, aching clamor across her throat, her temples, as her soul senses that it will be severed from her flesh.

She struggles to fight the separation, flailing through the gloom for memories, for motivations, that will keep her chained to this life—just as she did that night when the Phantom sank his fangs into her neck, draining all her blood, drinking it in like the sweetest, deadliest absinthe.

"Saya!" Alecto shouts, and through the haze, Saya can see her swinging sharply with her sword, hacking at the slavering sea of Chiropterans to get to her.

Saya gnashes her teeth, flailing weakly in Sanborn's pitiless grip. The deranged Chevalier responds to her struggles by digging on clawlike hand deep into her stomach, poniard nails embedded into her flesh, erupting in blood and agony.

Saya's mouth flies open in a scream that cannot come to life, a stillborn wail of helplessness and rage.

Sanborn is breathing hard, his face disgustingly close to hers, his two glowing googly eyes moving in to become one large, insane eye—a brutal bloodthirsty Cyclops. With every thread of life that unravels from Saya's body, he seems to drain it in, growing stronger, breathing deeper and sharper.

"You should see your face, Saya," he growls around a sickening smile. "You look as helpless, as wretched, as all those people did, that night in Vietnam. Where you ran free, without remorse or hesitation, and tore everyone limb from limb. I'll make you feel all that suffering before I'm done with you. I want to taste the same despair running through you, hear you screaming while I break every bone in your body. So you can understand the full depth of how _I've_ felt, every single second I was locked in Amshel's cage, grieving for a life no one else could mourn or recall."

His fingers in her bleeding stomach twist, contorting like snakes. Saya fights with all her might against a searing wave of blackness.

 _I have to get away from him,_ she thinks wildly _. I have to fight him._

_Haji's still down there somewhere._

_If I can't get to him before Sanborn does…_

It is in that precise moment that a sudden dark shape hurtles toward Sanborn from her peripheral vision.

She has just enough time, just that much presence of mind, to glimpse blazing red eyes and a leathery texture of eerie red-and-black striations, vast flapping wings—before Sanborn's grip is ripped loose from her throat and his overheated maniacal face vanishes from before her eyes.

Freed, unfettered, air courses back into Saya's lungs, sweet irresistible ambrosia.

Gasping, she slumps back against the wall, falling to her knees. Her throat pulses in time with her erratic heartbeat; she can feel blood oozing from the wound in her stomach, expelling jolts of agony as it closes up.

She hears a feral, roiling snarl. The air seems to vibrate with it.

The noise tugs her gaze to the left. She sees Sanborn howling and clawing at a dark angular beast. The creature bears huge snapping wings across a long back. She can see the vertebrae of his spine, a sharply-patterned row, protruding beneath. Its face is lean, lupine, the narrow snout arrayed in brilliant fangs.

Sanborn slashes furiously at the creature. All around him, the Chiropterans are growling and hissing, intensely agitated by the blood and terror that perfumes the air.

Saya grits her teeth and rises, snatching her sword from the floor. She has no time to process what is going on; she sees only that Sanborn is being attacked by one of his own Chiropterans, and that Meg and Alecto and Tyler still struggle with their own designated opponents, howls and bloodspray a trumpeting stretto to their sword-swipes.

With a livid outcry, she lunges into the furor, sword-first. Her ingress has the force of a deathray, a lethal bayonet that gashes and freezes all living organisms, exorcising shattered limbs and zinging stone in its wake.

Her only target is Sanborn.

She is overcome with a quivering hatred for him, for how he has taken Haji from her, recreated these bilious Chiropterans that are a bane to mankind, and hurt and frightened her friends and family in the name of deranged vengeance.

She slashes and chops without pause, crystallizing Chiropterans in the space of heartbeats, dislocating arms and shoulders. She loops left and right to evade the snap of fetid jaws and the scrape of hot scaly flesh. Her gaze is narrowed and locked on Sanborn, who is wrestling and growling at the harsh-winged Chiropteran, whose clothing still clings in blood-caked tatters to the sinewy arms and legs.

Saya raises her sword and swoops in, prepared to deliver the deathstrike—when heart-juddering déjà vu stops her short.

She stares at the creature's black blade-claws, erupting from a root of deep scarlet palms. The jagged, almost metallic texture of the flesh. The incisive curve and sweep of wings, flapping in fury like a medieval dragon taking flight.

Each frenetic movement, as vicious, as starkly unruly as it is, carries an echo of familiarity.

Memories assault her like embers flung into the air.

She sees those same wings, set against a starry night sky. Flapping in smooth, powerful strokes, cutting through the air like a swimmer through water. Dark tendrils of hair, fluttering in snapping wind. Pale blue eyes locked to hers, pale cool lips whispering her name, a noise swallowed by the maw of acceleration, sheer velocity.

She feels it then, established deep within her. The hot blossoming spark of knowledge, of _nearness_.

_No._

_That isn't one of Sanborn's Chiropterans._

_That's—_

"Haji!" His name rips from her throat, hoarse and vibrating with shock and disbelief. "Oh my god— _Haji_!"

Even in the midst of the howls, the singing blades and shattering flesh, her voice carries with the clearness of a whistle, transmitted at an unstoppable frequency.

Haji, struggling against Sanborn's brutal volley of slashes, is struck with the noise in electric sharpness. She sees the feral Chiropteran face snap to hers, the burning red eyes locked to her identical ruby-tinged gaze.

Recognition ignites a jolting current.

Before Saya's eyes, the terrifying tapered snout, the razor-white fangs and serrated wine-ebony flesh, shrink and blanch into elegant smoothness. Retracting, diminishing into human proportions, until the face that stares back at her, the pale wide eyes that fix on hers, are mirror-image to the ones that have dominated her fear-addled thoughts since her Awakening.

Yes, it _is_ him!

Her Haji, cheekbones stark from hunger, ribs prominent under the tattered dregs of his clothing. He still retains his wings and vestiges of his taloned Chiropteran hands; the rest of his body, blood-splattered and bruised, is now wholly human, wholly recognizable.

A dark-haired Icarus tumbled from the heavens, his waxwings snapping back and forth in shock and disorientation.

He stares at her amid the melee. She imagines how she must seem to him, disheveled and drenched in blood, wielding her sword in tight fists. But his eyes widen. The dark tapering brows across the white forehead shoot up, shock made palpable.

His lips move; she can hear clearly the name passing between them:

"Saya…"

Mesmerized, thunderstruck, Saya laughs and starts toward him—but Sanborn utilizes the distraction to eject a livid red spike clean through Haji's chest.

Saya watches the entire scene unfold; each second popping one emotion after the next, a set of Russian Matryoshka dolls opening to unearth another and another.

Smaller and smaller, like her own heart clenching in her chest.

The red spike tears clean through Haji's torso, erupting ribbons of blood, plunging out from his back in a gory scarlet firework. His eyes still on hers, widen, losing focus as the electric pain hits him. His body jerking sideways, flying back with the force of the trajectory.

Then everything speeds to double-time.

He hits the wall behind him, embedded deep against the bloody cement, legs dangling inches above the ground. Blood drips to the floor below him, puddling it red, agony's copious tears.

" _Haji_!" Saya is already moving before Sanborn can focus his attention toward her, running to help her Chevalier.

And then a massive explosion rocks the entire facility, the ground and walls trembling and crumbling, and the world as she knows it is plunged into black.

Over her earpiece, she hears a static crackle, and the urgent sound of David's voice.

"Saya! You need to get out of there! The government's napalming the facility! Get out of there right now!"

* * *


	18. Interlude: Selfish

_Interlude: Selfish_

" _Haji? Do you think being happy makes people… selfish_?" Saya once asked him.

It had been a hefty period of time since Haji had seen that shaded look in her eyes, the dismal dip to her brow.

His first impulse was to ask whether something had upset her, whether she was not feeling well. His second was to wonder what had brought this question on, what memories had triggered that half-shuttered expression on her face—a cousin to the expression she'd worn during the last months of the war.

Empty despondency, bitter self-flagellation.

" _Why would you ask that_?" he inquired gently.

Saya was seated by the window of the twins' apartment, looking out at the rolling metropolis before her. The glowing city lights struck shades of red and yellow across her profile, lighting shifting sparks in her eyes. Haji was reminded of another time, years ago, at the eve of their battle with Diva. When Saya had perched by the window in their New York base, harlequined in pale daylight, and gazed with dismal, distant eyes at all the sprawling human lives below her.

Her time of sleep had been near then, and, upon some quick mental arithmetic, Haji felt a sudden choking understanding that this was realistically happening here too.

Saya frequently grew more indolent, more reflective and reclusive, when her long sleep was near. Haji could always tell by the dim glow in her eyes, by the faint decline in her body temperature. Her movements grew torpid, almost dreamlike; her appetite for food tended to wane; she asked more for juices, teas and water, as though afflicted by a terrible thirst.

Contrastingly, during their nights, her hunger seemed to peak, as though she was in heat, imbuing her with a desperation that was almost ferocious. Haji reveled silently in those voracious bouts of lovemaking, where she seemed to grow hungrier and hungrier despite each time she was left satisfied, where she demanded everything he had to give, unrelenting, absorbing, and left him wrung out afterwards in a breathless daze that was almost echo to his human days of sleep.

Yet, amid that bone-deep bliss was the bittersweet tinge, the awareness that this time would soon be taken away from him, that she would soon shiver out of his arms and into her lengthy hibernation again.

" _Happiness probably does make people selfish_ ," Saya whispered then, half to him, but mostly to herself. " _It makes them blind to everything but their own selves. When people are sad, they notice more things around them. They're more perceptive to other people's feelings."_

" _Perhaps,"_ Haji amended, stepping closer to her. _"But it isn't always the case. Sometimes, when people grieve, they become so wrapped up in their own sadness that they can't see anything around them. They lose their sense of balance, of seeing things clearly."_

Saya nodded, conceding to the point. But her eyes remained troubled, dismal. " _I'm only asking because… ever since this war's ended, since I've spent time with you and the girls… I feel as though I've gotten selfish. I only care about doing things that make me happy. What I want. Where I can go. The things I think about these days, they seem so self-indulgent. I feel like they shouldn't be."_

" _Saya, you endured a great deal of suffering, to be allowed this… self-indulgence,"_ Haji reminded her quietly _. "You mustn't forget that you fought for it. You deserve your own life. You deserve to be happy."_

" _I know. I just…"_ Turning in her seat, Saya sighed and extended a hand to him.

Haji took it, fingers meshing with hers, and sank gracefully to the floor beside her. Saya draped a slender arm around him, lowering her head to press her forehead against his, a now-habitual gesture that had become a marked intimacy of theirs.

It was what he had done for her in the days after the war ended, when she would wake up at the zenith of night with a cold sweat covering her, trembling, rattling like a crystal goblet on the verge of shattering to pieces. The ugly memories that tainted her mind with each recollection of the war, lurid red bruises on her psyche, would never entirely be erased; even if centuries passed, Haji knew they would leave behind scars.

The most he could do, as always, was offer her a bolster in her grief, and pray, with time and rest, that their sting would fade.

" _I still remember all those people who lost their lives for us_ ," Saya whispered to him now, _"They all suffered as much as we did. They lost so much. Some of them lost everything. All because of a mistake I made, years ago, when I set Diva free. And when I think about them now, I wonder… if I deserve to be this happy. With you. With Meg and Alecto. Sometimes I feel like I shouldn't be."_

" _Saya_ …"

" _I know. It sounds strange. But…I just feel like there ought to be a pause, somewhere along the line. That I should stop all my silly self-involved pursuits, and look back on the things I've done. At all the people who went through so much at my expense."_

Haji paused, considering. Then, his lips curved very slightly at the edges. " _You just did_."

" _What_?"

" _When you spoke of them just now. When you remembered them, and everything they endured during the war._ _Life goes on, Saya, the world stops for no one. The only pauses we can make, we make by ourselves."_

Saya hesitated, meditative, seeming to mull this over. Haji watched the weight lift from her brow, although the troubled gleam in her eyes remained. Nonetheless her lips softened, growing fuller, curving. Turning, she graced him with one of her lovely melancholic smiles. " _Is that what you do, Haji, whenever I go into my long sleep? Is that how you remember me_?"

Haji gently tightened the fingers that were laced through his. " _I do not need to."_

" _Why not_?"

" _I think of you every second, Saya. You know that_."

" _Even during my sleep_?"

" _Especially during your sleep_."

Saya said nothing, but she continued to search his face, her eyes intent, inquiring, shaded by thick lashes. Then gradually, Haji saw the shadow of gloom leave her features, like sunlight breaking through overcast clouds. The smile she passed him now was lighter, gentler, free of unhappy undertones.

" _Haji_ …" she murmured, and she looked like she was on the verge of asking him something.

" _Yes_?"

A brief pause, a soft incline to her brow, barely perceptible, and then that same unguarded smile again. " _Nothing. I was just wondering, where I'd be without you. And then I realized… if I didn't have you with me, back then, or now, I would've been dead a long time ago. Like all the friends we lost_."

" _Saya_ …"

" _When you first went against my wish, that night in the MET, you told me to live on._ _To live for tomorrow. But later, when I thought you were dead…I asked myself how I'd be able to go on without you. All those nights I cried, even though I was happy everyone was around me. That I was with my family. But without you… I couldn't think about more than the next sunrise. I couldn't imagine a future at all."_

Haji's fingers gripped hers tighter, if only by a fraction. He brought up the other hand, the swathed chiropteran one, to touch her cheek, brush away the smooth ribbons of hair across her forehead. Saya's own hand came up to intercept his. She drew both his hands in her smaller ones, clasping them tightly to her chest.

Haji could feel the strong, reassuring thud of her heart through the fabric of her shirt.

It was a tempo he always memorized, battened on, during the desolating years of her Long Sleep. That steady, metronomic drumbeat that bade him to live on, to keep going, even during the days where his loneliness was so complete it threatened to splatter his brain within the confines of his mind, deprivation igniting into lurid insanity.

Saya's presence kept him whole, kept him human. And during her hibernation, her memory urged him to hold himself together, for his sake, and for her own.

Without her light to glow through his dreary world, the torpor would have numbed him to oblivion.

" _Haji_ ," she whispered, intense. " _Please promise me you won't leave me. Nothing in my life will ever make sense unless you're there."_

" _Saya, I…"_

" _Please. Swear it. I probably am a selfish person, but that can't be helped. If I'm going to live my life, live it the way you say I deserve to, then it can only be with you. No other way. I know I don't say it enough, but you're my anchor to this world. I love you."_

Haji did not know how to respond. That kind of grimness to her expression, that unflinching intensity, was so similar to the one she had worn when she had made him promise to kill her, during that fateful train journey. And yet, this promise she asked of him now was so fundamentally different, and, at the same time, so similar.

Her life, her very existence, was being laid out once again in his hands.

Haji wasn't sure how to respond to the influx of emotion that surged through him, engulfing his chest with a sensation that was as close to pain as forefinger was to his thumb. He could only react the way he had reacted to her initial promise. By leaning forward and drawing her tightly against him. She sighed and embraced him in return. Her body felt so slipping and slender against him, so tiny.

Such a contrast to the vast area she absorbed in his mind, in each of his thoughts.

" _Saya_ …" he whispered against her hair. " _I swear to you. I will stay by your side for as long as you wish it. If you say I am your anchor to this world, you know full well you have always been mine._ "

Saya took in a slow breath, and Haji felt the warm tingling outrush against his throat when she exhaled in a lilting laugh. " _So I guess that means we've both agreed to stay stuck together, hm_?"

Haji managed a brief chuckle. " _I believe so_."

Saya laughed again, more softly. Haji still felt the thrum of it in his chest, like a quivering gold cord on a cello, when she took his face in both her warm hands and brought her lips to his.

The kiss was soft, syrupy, an intoxicating _dragee_ that he found himself committing to memory, as he did with all the others, in the bitter wake of her impending sleep.


	19. Inferno

_Two hours earlier…_

The window is a stark square with the topmost blinds drawn. The moon rises halfway across the horizon, an aloof white orb punctuated by the controlled rise and fall of skyscrapers. Pale bands of light filter through the blinds, competing with the gold desklamp where a sharp-eyed man, in suit and tie, steeples his fingers across a gleaming boardroom desk and addresses the five directors seated around him:

"We have no choice left but to shut down the facility, gentlemen. There is far too much riding on our accounts if the situation gets out of control."

"But Sanborn assured us that we would have pureblood Chiropteran Queens if he got his hands on this… Saya," a portly director argues. "We cannot allow such a priceless opportunity to slip through our fingers!"

"I agree," says a gray-faced artifact. "The only reason we gave Sanborn free reign of the facility was his promise of a Chiropteran Queen. There is still a chance he will subdue and bring her to us."

A third director jabs the air with a lighted cigar. "Haven't you received intel on the situation? The factory is in chaos! Blood, sirens, bodies everywhere! These are Chiroptera we're dealing with—not racehorses! We need to put a lid on this situation now, before we suffer more damages!"

"Agreed," intones a fourth. "Sanborn has already let loose all the Chiropteran test subjects in the facility. A crazy decision—proves he is veering on mental instability. We cannot do business with these wild cards. The resultant damages are far greater than the profits."

"There's already a chance the Chiropterans might escape into town," the fifth puts in. "The first batch was sent out purely to lure in this Saya and her nieces. But if the situation escalates, government officials will be homing in on us like vultures!"

"Exactly," concludes the man heading the desk. "Which is why we must agree, unanimously and immediately, to withdraw our funding from this venture. Order any of our surviving staff to pull out from the facility, and take nothing with them."

"Nothing?" demands the first rotund man. "But… this was a promising project. We were making such good progress."

"Perhaps so. But the costs are beyond even our capacity to shoulder. And Sanborn has proven himself to be as unreliable as we expected. He's incapable of seeing the big picture. His obsession for that Chiropteran Saya has completely blinded him. We must withdraw our capital from this affair, and focus on making a clean break. I have already ordered all existing data on this project to be wiped clean."

"And… what about the facility?" prompts the third man between a thick cloud of cigar smoke.

"I have already ordered an anonymous… information leakage to reach the government. In order to nip the situation in the bud, they have deployed Helijets to Napalm the facility. They cannot risk Chiropterans breaking loose among civilians on such a large scale. They will detonate the facility in two hours time. Even at the risk of eliminating evidence that could lead them to us. They have no choice."

"And… what about Sanborn and the Chiroptera?"

The man does not bat an eyelid. "Acceptable losses. In the meanwhile, let us concentrate on a new venture that holds considerable promise. Tell me. What do any of you know about Artificial Intelligence?"

* * *

_Presently…_

The explosion rocks the air in a massive sunburst, making everything around Saya jangle and vibrate. A section of ceiling beyond her topples, the impact thunderous. At her right, the wall ignites in acrid flame, its heat blistering.

Saya flinches and pirouettes out of the way, landing in a crouch, her sword held across her. Everywhere she looks, the facility is crumbling, melting in smoke and flame. Blood pounds loud and hot in her ears.

Over her earpiece, static fizzles, the explosion's shockwaves interspersing the signal.

"David!" she snaps. "What's going on?"

"—vernment's—bombing the facility! –et out—now!"

"Can't you do something?"

"—Red Shield's—chief of staff—couldn't contact the governme—on time!—ombing's already—started!"

"What?"

"—et out! NOW!"

Saya grimaces, struggling to hear the coughing words between the static crackle.

Around her, the Chiropterans bellow, deep guttural groans of dismay, the noise blending with the resonant impact of pulse grenades. The floor trembles, explosions earsplitting, nerve-wracking. Concrete chunks topple all around, from the walls and ceiling, amid propulsive volcanic flame.

Saya ducks out of a crashing concrete slab's path, rockshards scattering behind her. She smells thick smoke and the tang of cordite.

The entire place is a feverish delirium of flame and turmoil.

"Saya!" Meg and Alecto are in the foreground, Tyler between them. A massive block of ceiling smashes down, barely missing them. They are waving frantically to her. "Saya!" Meg screams. Shockwaves devour the sound. Saya has to read Meg's lips. "We have to get out of here!"

She nods, although, amid spurting searing flames and clattering rocks, she doubts they can see her.

It does not matter. She _needs_ them to escape—God, she _can't_ risk having them crushed in this chaos. It brings back too many memories; it slaps her back to the MET bombing, the sharp odor of shattering concrete and bitter smoke, the fear and pounding heartbeats.

Diva's remains had been scorched to ash there. She cannot let the same thing happen to Diva's daughters, her beloved nieces.

But more than that, she cannot lose, as she nearly did that night, the one person without whom her existence ceases to _be_.

"Haji!" His name tears involuntarily from her throat, a throttled gasp of oxygen amid curdling flame and smog. "Haji!"

She sees him then.

Hunched at the corner, clattering rocks and rippling flames all around. He has wrenched Sanborn's red spike from out of his torso. Through the dark rags of his clothing, she can see the bubbling hole in his chest. His body has such little blood that the wound is not even streaming.

Instead blood oozes, thick and clotted, like milk gone rancid, like something that shouldn't be touched or consumed.

She feels a wrenching surge of fear— _what have they been doing to him_?—but it is nearly swallowed by the next series of explosions.

Intense jolts shake the floor, throbbing the very air. Chiropterans howl and thrash, lunging from left to right, some igniting in flame, others pummeled under falling cement. Saya weaves between the baying misery, a mass carnage _sans_ blades or bullets, and dodges fast between the rock-showers and flame-bursts.

A wall beside her erupts, granite and smoke clouding the air, but Saya raises her forearms over her head, shielding herself, and hazards forward.

She is at Haji's side just as another explosion hits the facility. The violent concussion throws them both off-balance, but she grabs his arm, catching her balance before they both fall. The feel of his skin against hers, paper-thin and hardened by gaunt bone, but still cool and familiar and _his_ , makes her want to weep.

He's still alive! He's all right!

"Haji!" She reaches her arm to circle his waist, astonished by the narrowness of him. It is clear he hasn't fed on blood in several weeks. "Haji, are you okay?"

He raises his head, slippery tangles of dark hair streaming all around his face. Blinking slowly, eyes fixing on hers. At first hazy, then resolving into lucid, incredulous sharpness.

"Saya…" he breathes, half-coughing in the thick smoke. "You're—you're really here?"

"Of course I'm here! God, Haji—please don't try to talk! We're need to get out of here!"

The explosions intensify. Swirling flame, impenetrable dirt everywhere. The Chiropterans are howling insanely, eyes aglow with a repulsive desperation as they are roasted and crushed alive. It is a sound, a _sight_ , which Saya knows she will remember to her dying day. The air is thick, suffused with the aroma of death and terror, napalm and concrete.

Saya holds her sleeve to her mouth, breathing through it; she tightens her other arm around Haji.

"Haji, we need to go!" she tells him. "Can you walk?"

Haji's skin, while always pale, is chalky—the terrible shade of anemia and exhaustion. But his eyes narrow in steely resolve. He gives a curt nod.

Never one to waver or capitulate, her Haji. Not once during battle, and never once when it comes to her. She feels a dizzying arctic chill, when she understands how many times, how many ways, she has come so close to losing him.

How close she _still_ might be.

"Come on," she tells him, low. "Let's move fast."

They start out in tandem, flames and flambéed Chiropterans swooping all around. Meg and Tyler and Alecto are a few paces off, but within this fiery labyrinth, the distance seems unreachable. Although Haji's breathing is shallow, he still bears most of his own weight. His steps match Saya's more out of instinct than effort.

She bites her lip, squeezing him hard around his waist, a silent corporeal reassurance. She feels the unexpected congestion of tears when he squeezes back.

 _We're going to get out of here,_ she tells herself feverishly. _We're going to get out of here. It's going to be all right._

Another portion of the roof gives way, crashing. Flames waver in the resounding aftereffects, filling the room in garish orange light. The walls groan, a sound that congeals with the hoarse shrieks, the snarls, of the raging Chiropterans. The stench of their burning flesh is repulsive, unreal. It clogs Saya's sinuses, makes her retch as much from nausea as from suffocation.

It feels as though she has crashed through the surface of the earth, plunged face-first into the boiling core of Hell.

When she reaches Meg and Alecto, relief makes her knees want to give way. The two girls, blood-splattered and dirt-smudged, race over to enfold her and Haji in a tight hug. Saya shuts her eyes and battens on their contact, on their closeness. And, most of all, she battens on the shape of Haji pressed beside her, his ribs a hard striation against the sweaty skin of her forearm, his long hair sticking to her own moist brow.

Tyler stands nearby, warily eyeing the crashing walls and the roaring flames.

"People—we gotta move!" he hollers. "Group hugs for later!"

"Tyler's right!" Alecto shouts. "We have to find a way out!"

Smoke permeates the air, an oppressive blanket; Saya coughs. "There's an exit around the next corridor," she tells them. "The same spot we broke in from! Let's head there!"

"Okay!" Meg says. "But what about—"

No sooner do the words leave her mouth than Saya feels Haji abruptly stiffen, head snapping to the left. The buzz of adrenaline under his skin, well-known and chilling to her, is sure testament of danger.

A scarlet spike swoops out between flames, streaking toward the group. Saya has barely enough time to glimpse the jagged point before Haji yanks her out of the way, sending the inferno's instrument striking the wall behind them. A deep split rends the wall, the spike quivering in place.

She and Haji whirl as one, just as another spike arrows toward their group, in Meg's direction. Then Tyler is there, knocking the object away in mid-air, poised to defend her.

Flames dance all around, sinuous, serpentine, enfolding the air with blistering heat. Chiropterans are twisting and shriveling, screaming. But amid that clamor, Saya sees the tall figure of Sanborn emerging clearly, as though he has risen up out of the floor.

She hears his sibilant voice as though right against her ear.

"Where are you going, Saya?" he growls, eyes livid with unspooled madness. "Do you really think I'm going to let you leave, after everything that you've done to me? Why, just look around us. Flames and smoke, raving Chiroptera. Dead bodies everywhere. It's almost as gruesome as Vietnam, isn't it? Surely it's a sign. The Almighty sending me a message, telling me that the arena where you destroyed _my_ life, wiped clean _my_ existence, is the same place I should end _yours_."

Saya does not answer. She simply allows Alecto, at Haji's side, to take over as her Chevalier's support. Saya in turn, draws her sword, stepping forward. Winged by tall spates of flame, her silhouette is gilded in gold. She lifts her blade, slicing the straight edge across her palm, letting the blood run in a crimson stream.

Her eyes narrow, the pupils filigreed with livid red.

"Get going," she tells her nieces. "I'll deal with him first."

"What? No way!" Meg snaps. "We came in here to get _all_ of us out—and that's how it's going to be."

"Meg, please just—"

Another explosion, so close Saya's ears ring. The wall beside them flies apart, igniting. Flames arc across the air, saddled by jagged chunks of concrete. The smell of cordite is oppressive.

Saya and the group stagger, but remain standing.

Sanborn takes the opportunity to lunge forward, one grotesquely-bloated arm upraised, swinging to strike. Saya blocks the blow with the flat edge of her sword, pushing Sanborn back, then jabs at him again.

They tussle in a blur, punctuated by sharp clangs of metal against leathery hide, by stifled grunts and snarls. Saya's blows are precise and deadly, movements invoking the fluid grace of a ballerina's, but with tenfold the force.

Still, it is impossible to break past Sanborn's defenses. Hatred neither blinds nor muddles him—it merely whets his parries into sanguinary sharpness. Saya barely evades each blow, feeling them whistle past her ears, feeling the zinging violence behind his flesh.

Sanborn's eyes are wild, a fiery light that scorches even harsher than the flames around them. His lips are drawn back, teeth clenched in a snarl.

"I'll die before I let you leave this place, Saya," he spits. "I've waited too long! I'll see you choking on your own blood at my hand, before I leave this life myself!"

"Meg! Allie!" Saya shouts, ducking under a whistling blow from her opponent. "Get out now!"

Meg shakes her head, aghast. "Aunt Saya—"

Another reverberant explosion tosses them to the floor. The entire facility seems to jitter on its foundations. Its capacity to stand upright is imminently short-lived. A massive column of roof topples, sending up a dense cloud of dirt and smoke. It cuts off the group's access to Saya. Through interspersing cracks, they can only see eyeblink glimpses of her and Sanborn, dancing amid the eerie red flames, locked in a grueling death match.

Tyler grabs Meg's arm. "Meg—we have to get out of here! We're all gonna get pulped!"

Meg is wild-eyed. "But Saya's still there! We have to help her—"

"I will," Haji cuts in, and draws away from Alecto to stand, with the slightest faltering, on his own two feet. "The rest of you, please go."

Alecto shakes her head. "Haji, you're in no condition to fight! If you stay, you'll get—"

"I will not let Saya fight him alone," Haji interjects. His voice is low, unbending. "But this place is too dangerous for the rest of you. Leave, now."

Meg steps forward stubbornly. "Dammit Haji! Don't start with the martyrdom heroics. We're not letting you stay here—"

"If _you_ stay, you will all get killed."

"But you can't—"

"Megaera. _Go_."

Meg falls silent, shocked by his tone. Despite all the decades she and Alecto have known the older Chevalier, it is not a tenor they are familiar with. Beside Meg, Tyler wears an expression of helpless pleading consternation.

Haji turns and addresses the younger man succinctly. "Get her and Alecto out of here. This building will not hold for more than a few minutes."

Tyler hesitates, then nods. He takes Meg and Alecto by both arms, tugging. The two girls resist briefly, but are gradually forced to weave fast through the blazing pandemonium.

Haji watches them vanish amid smoke and crackling flame, then, once satisfied he can no longer sense their presence, turns and swoops headlong into the field of smoke, where Saya continues to battle the deranged Sanborn.

* * *

Opposing Sanborn's assault is like trying to hold back a careening locomotive.

His blows are ceaseless, untiring; a brutal flurry of swipes and blows, an endless barrage of lethal red spikes. His eyes glow a demonic red. He looks at Saya as though at a means to an end, a sword to a kamikaze samurai, a plunging precipice to a lemming.

Battling him is not the same as battling the other Chevaliers: there is none of the sneering relish, the dancelike finesse Saya experienced when fighting Phantom. He lacks James Ironside's steely discipline and unyielding tenacity. He has none of Solomon's airy grace, his manner of elusive movement and lilting wordplay.

Sanborn fights as though he has nothing more left but to fight, nothing more left but to kill her. As though that is all there can ever be. It is a totality, a singlemindedness beyond grief, beyond rage or despair.

It is a simple waking, living death.

Saya, who has skirted along that road so intimately, who has fought and bled and endured decades of torment, just for the promise of sweet death at the end of her journey, understands too well what this man must have felt all these centuries.

And then one of his spikes slashes her across the shoulder, splattering blood, and Saya's surge of empathy fades.

Adrenaline scalding her limbs, Saya thrusts her sword forward. Her opponent parries, jabbing toward her, and Saya swings out of the way, just in time. Spinning, she stabs back at her enemy, watches Sanborn angle his sinewy arm vertically to deflect her blow.

Stray sparks fly as metal collides against something even denser and deadlier.

They move through the blistering inferno, trading slashes. Saya pirouettes sideways and sweeps her sword in a helix of gleaming silver, so her next blow aims for Sanborn's shoulder. The Chevalier evades so fast he seems to slip between moments. Snarling, he lunges for Saya, driving his massive taloned hand forward.

Saya flicks her sword upward, lightning-fast, deflecting the blow. The metallic kiss upon impact rings like a siren.

"I'll roast you to a crisp before I send you off to Hell myself, Saya," Sanborn growls. "I swore never to rest until I had killed you, until I could feel your blood on my hands! You're the one who started all this! You who began the war against Diva, who set her free, and cursed us all, you selfish bitch!"

He swings the second blow so hard it almost connects with Saya's head. She dodges fast, emerging at his right to deliver a sharp slash. Sanborn fights back in an unflinching fury. Sweat stings Saya's eyes as she fends him off, her muscles aching. She breathes in tight controlled huffs as they parry and strike amid toppling walls, smothering heat and flame.

She knows instinctively that the building is going to topple soon. She has to find a way to break Sanborn's fortifications, finish him off.

"I'm sorry I killed your family," she snarls. "But after the war ended, you had a chance to live your life! You could have found another reason to go on! What good did all this hate do for you?!"

" _Good_? You'd have the filthy gall to talk of _good_!" Sanborn screams. "You've infected everyone you ever touched! You ruined your human family's life the second you awoke in Okinawa! Parading around as a human, killing your own race on the excuse that they shouldn't live—and then squandering all their lives for yourself! You killed and caused hatred wherever you went! Deaths, grieving, agonies! You're the cause of it all!"

Saya staggers against Sanborn's blows. Sanborn shoves her back with his spike-laden hand, a porcupine's noxious laceration. Blood splatters Saya's arm. She cries out and flies back, crashing back-first against a blazing cement mound. Her coat sleeve catches fire in the conflagration.

It sears her flesh, even as Sanborn's enraged ravings, the hollow desperation in his eyes, sears her memory, riddling her with recollections and remorse.

She struggles to put out the flame, but Sanborn launches himself on her, pummeling her again and again until she is forced to keep warding off the blows.

"I have had enough!" Sanborn howls, eyes wild. "Good or bad, past or future, it has no meaning anymore! Nothing will erase what you've done—nothing will bring back the life you took from me. All those people that you killed—they will remain dead forever, because of you. What was destroyed will always be destroyed! You, Saya, you started all of it—you're nothing more than a filthy pestilence!"

He seizes Saya by the throat, flinging her back against a wall. Saya collides with it back-first, then slides to the floor on her knees, panting.

One hand is still loosely clasped to her sword. She tastes blood where her teeth have cut into her tongue. Her muscles are leaden in the weight of fatigue.

The distant boom of explosion is getting stronger. She feels the imminent tremor in her bones, the foretelling of an earthquake, an apocalypse. Around her, flames crackle, their heat pressing to her clothes, her flesh.

She sees a world awash in fierce orange, spilled blood and bodies everywhere.

 _I really am going to die here,_ she thinks hazily. _I really am going to Hell…_

She watches the final spike snap out between Sanborn's grotesque hand. A lurid serpent's tongue.

Her eyes are fixed on it, riveted, even though she is mentally shrieking at her muscles to obey, at her body to rise from this defeated slump. She cannot let it end this way. She cannot let Sanborn win. If she loses, he will focus his wrath on the girls, on Tyler, on Haji.

She cannot allow that to happen. She cannot let anyone suffer for her sake, ever again.

She has vowed never to see anyone else's blood spilt for her sake, save her own.

"Even if I no longer have Diva's blood to finish you off," Sanborn snarls. "You will die if I rip your heart out of your chest. I want to crush it to pulp while its still beating, and laugh in your face as you scream. I want that to be the last thing you ever see or hear. Then only can I rest in peace. To the serenade of your death. After all, it's only fair, isn't it Saya?"

Saya grits her teeth, rising to her feet and bringing her sword upto bear. Her palm strokes the sharp edge, smearing dark blood across the metal. Her face bears a look of stony, resigned silence.

"If it kills you in the process," she says flatly. "It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."

Sanborn's eyes blaze, hatred and triumph a fuel to set them alight. With an ululating roar, he charges at Saya, spike held ready, thrust forward to guide his trajectory like a lance.

Saya remains standing there, motionless save for her upraised sword. She steels herself for the impact, for the moment when the spike will tear through her chest, pierce her heart—her blood beats a strong and salient tattoo against her temples, the final concerto of a rhythm that will soon cease to exist.

But then she sees, _feels_ , the whoosh of flapping wings, the dark blur of motion.

Suddenly Haji is before her, his back to Sanborn. And Saya observes, seemingly at her leisure, the entire macabre scene unroll frame by frame.

Sanborn's red spike tears through Haji's back, erupting in blood from the front, at his stomach. The angle skews, the spike angling sideways, striking not Saya's heart, but her sternum. The tip bursting into her flesh in a blinding splash of blood, ripping in, cleaving past her torso to bury deep into the wall behind her. Haji's pale face swimming before her, mouth open in a soundless cry of violation, eyes wide pinpricks amidst the smoke.

Saya's own scream seems to come as if from far away, a half-garbled noise that is Haji's name.

And behind Haji, Sanborn, face contorting as his momentum brings him headlong with Saya's extended blade.

There is a horrible, sickening sound. Almost liquid, but with a crunch right at the very end, like when one bites into a juicy apple. Sanborn screams—it isn't the pain that staggers him so much as the severe abruptness of the invasion. He goes perfectly still, standing behind Haji, his spiked arm still embedded deep into Haji's and Saya's torsos, pinning them there.

He himself is motionless, as though the ground has absorbed him where he stands.

His blood runs in a warm gush down Saya's sword-arm, mingling with the blood from her own chest-wound, from Haji's. Jerkily, Sanborn raises his head, looking past Haji's shoulder, at Saya's face. Saya sees, in his eyes, the reflection of dancing flames, and her own face, a pale cipher smeared in red war-paint.

Then Sanborn chokes, his weight slumping forward against Haji's frame, driving the spike deeper through their bodies. She and Haji cry out in tandem. Saya hears the harsh racing crackle of crystallization, brimming Sanborn's body with numbness, supplanting the ravening hate.

Sanborn's shock almost makes the air hum. His voice is a choked hiss, virulent to the very end.

"You… took away everything I had," he rasps. "You were supposed… to die."

"I'm sorry," Saya whispers, fighting to breathe through the pain. "I'm sorry I killed your family. I… didn't know."

"I don't need your _pity_ ," Sanborn spits out, a sound that tastes like acid and bile. "There's nothing … in my life to be sorry for. It ended a long time ago. All I had left… was to kill you…"

The crystallization is blossoming across his face now. Saya watches the twisted visage go ashen, tingeing gray. Supple flesh hardens, numbing to smooth stone; dull cracks intersperse across the surface.

Sanborn's eyes remain fixed on Saya, impaling her just as viciously as the red barb that lashes her and Haji in place. A gristly union of not two, but three.

When the barb itself crystallizes, Saya feels the chill all across her body, _inside_ of it. A horde of icy spiders, the most lurid of shivers. She grits her teeth to stifle a gasp.

"Everyone you ever killed," Sanborn hisses. "They will remain with you forever. You'll never be free of the blood you spilled. You'll never escape what you are."

"I—" Saya clenches her teeth against a searing wave of pain.

Sanborn's cheeks and forehead are turning gray, rived with cracks. His lips move infinitesimally. Saya cannot hear the words, but she sees them, shaped on a mouth gone ashen, on a hate-warped face stiffening to stone.

" _What's done_ … _cannot be undone_."

The crystallization takes it full toll. Sanborn's face is captured in that definitive expression, shaped by the curdling rage and loathing.

Dead now. Robbed of his privilege to tear her apart himself, denied his long-smoldering vengeance.

But not robbed of his ultimate goal.

Saya is pinned flat to the wall, Sanborn's crystallized spike impaling her there. Haji is pressed tight against her, the barb snaking through his own chest, his back weighted down by Sanborn's heavy crystallized body. His jaw tightens as he struggles to release them, but the spike will not budge. They are locked in place against the wall, clamped tight as magnets. Rocks tumble all around and flames roar in a maddening inferno.

Haji's brow is pale with beads of sweat.

"Saya," he breathes. "Are you all right?"

She nods, and squirms shakily against the barb, struggling to tear it loose. Her movements only draw a seething hiss from Haji. The barb runs through him as well. If either of them forces it out the wrong way, the results will be catastrophic.

Saya's breathing is erratic, skin fevered with pain and heat. She can feel Haji pressed against her, a frame as rigid as the hard wall behind her. But when the next explosion ensues, she feels the involuntary tremor that races through both surfaces, sharp, almost suppressed.

"Haji…" she chokes. "Haji… I'm so sorry."

Haji's throat works as he swallows. He raises his head, slick tangles of dark hair falling across a white forehead. Eyes on hers, glazed at the edges with pain, but more than that, tender; tender and infinitely humble.

"Sorry?" he whispers, in the tone of an inquiry.

Saya grits her teeth. Tears are hot and thick as they fill her eyes. "You should've—gone on with the others! But now you're hurt and— _ohgod_ , Haji, the place is falling apart! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! I didn't—mean for this to happen to you! It's all my fault!"

"What…?"

"Sanborn—was after you because of me! Because of Vietnam, and what I did to him! He was—" She breaks off, retching from pain and smoke.

The heat is all around them—god, it is _unbearable_ , there is no space, no break between, no way to escape it. Flames are dancing everywhere, filling her eyes and nose, her sensorium, her very _mind_ , with a terrible, feverish orange glow. Pain pulses through her, thick and unstoppable. She feels tears trail molten lines down her cheeks.

"I'm sorry, Haji…" she whimpers. "I'm so sorry."

Haji makes an indeterminate sound in his throat. Half-pained, half-reproachful, communicating a tenor only in her capacity to understand. His cool hard forehead, faintly slick with sweat, falls to press to hers. Long tendrils of his hair fall all around them, stirring at her cheeks and lips. Saya squeezes her eyes tight, fighting to breathe through the pain, the grief.

Tears seep from her closed eyelids.

"I'm sorry," she says again, because she can never say it enough, can never say it as many times as she can. No amount of words, no limitless stores of remorse, will ever wipe clean the blood, the utter obscene _filthiness_ , that razes her past, and that has ultimately led her and Haji to this terrible place.

Her Chevalier does not answer, save for pressing his lips to her temple.

A cry rends out of her, jagged and despairing. She opens her eyes to regard his own. "You... y-you should have gotten out when I told you to!"

Haji shakes his head, his face white and glowing in the flames. She sees the corners of his mouth tic. His eyes are wet, lashes glistening. The heat rippling all around them is intense. She feels as though he is wavering, melting. As though they both are.

"Saya, didn't I swear to you… that I would always stay by your side?" he whispers. "That will never change. Now, least of all…"

She chokes back a dry sob. Her arms lift, lashing tight around him. They are pinned together by the barb as though fated to end by this design, helplessly bound to one another, so closely entwined that she can imagine them never coming apart, never imaging that they possibly can.

"Haji…" she says, shuddering. "Y-you can't… want to go to hell with me."

Haji's arms wrap around her, a steely cinch to block off the blistering heat, the massive fireballs and dirt. His brow is still pressed to hers, eyes dark and shimmering in the haze of smoke.

"There is no Hell for me…" he breathes. "As long as I am with you."

Saya does not know how to answer. Walls are crashing, tumbling everywhere between flames. Tears spill in hot tracks over her bloodied face, dripping down her chin, mingling with Haji's tears, just as the spike that has pierced them together, fuses blood and flesh between a shared spire of agony.

Her final words ride on a wavering whisper. "I love you."

And in the next instant, the final explosion tears through the facility, a stunning force that sweeps past the air— _concussion_ —only the word is a pale shadow of the immense _power_ and _thrust_ she feels from the building collapsing.

The blast disintegrates all the walls. The roof topples with a thunderous roar. Fumes swoop up Saya's nose; lurid red flame sears her eyes. Fire envelops everything around her, a scorching firestorm too powerful to be produced by just one explosion. It is like a blooming mushroom cloud; fire billowing out and out and relentlessly spreading.

Saya shuts her eyes tight and clings to Haji, two sparrows caught in a tempest, suspended in the motionless soundless eye while lurid pyrotechnics blaze all around them. Concrete crashes and tumbles in every direction, left, right, fore and aft, a sickening hailstorm from hell.

Then suffocating silence.

And the world crashes to black.


	20. Interlude: Kair the Cāmmodearer

_Interlude_ : _Kair the Cāmmodearer_.

_The Zoo_

_France_

This sedentary lifestyle had grown on him. The roaring fires, the juicy platters of meats and exotic fruits. The crisp cool sheets and soft pillows, endless hot bathwater that never had to be rationed, the liberty of never going hungry, of never knowing frostbite. He owned more than five sets of clothes and three pairs of shoes; bliss for a child who had never owned anything his entire life.

A child who did not even own a fixed home.

He did not have to haul in firewood, handle welding tools, care for horses, or beg for coins in the frigid mornings. The menial chores required of him here were child's play. His duty to serve and attend to Saya was gradually metamorphosing into an eagerness that was not duty at all.

In every practical sense, life at the Zoo had been a vast improvement in Haji's lifestyle, given the harrowing poverty that he had been born into.

The eldest child of a _tzigani_ tribesman, the clan had drifted to France from the frozen north of Norilsk, Russia. Haji had been born on a September—the iciest imaginable. Like the final circle of hell.

Indeed, from the moment of his birth, cold had been as familiar to him as mother's milk.

His family had never owned much. Six children and a battered caravan, living in a country that reviled their origins and their very presence, made for an impecunious life.

Haji's memories of his father were of a tall raw-boned man, with hard calloused hands, a bristly black beard and tired suspicious eyes. By daylight, he labored with horses, cattle rearing, woodcutting, ironwork, and with any other snatches of employment that scattered his way. By night, he drank himself comatose.

Haji's mother had been a slight, overworked woman, with a kind of evanescent beauty that peaked at her youth and faded quickly in the wake of the childbearing, hunger and the slogging sadness that was to comprise her entire life.

From an early age, Haji had been a solemn boy, hardworking and silent. He'd earned his keep ever since he'd been able to walk on his own two feet, helping his father with the chores, lending his mother a hand with his younger siblings. Their tribe had been constantly moving, from the crowded squares of towns, where the populace glowered at them like rodents, to vast frigid forests where they obtained firewood and game in mornings, and roasted them over flames in evenings.

Since boyhood, Haji had been accustomed to travel, to shifting countries and unusual sceneries, to peculiar languages and outlandish cultures. He had learnt early to blend in with his surroundings, to make his way among crowds without sticking out.

He was a pariah, a _Gypsy_ , and he knew full-well the repercussions of that ill-fated bloodline.

His tribe had been barely-tolerated in Russia, a scourge the citizens disdained to brush with the very tips of their shoes or hems of their skirts. When they had coasted to France, there had been no improvement in the situation. The disgrace tailing his people was undeviating.

 _Gypsy filth. Gitan scum_. _Thieving Roma._

There were no jobs available for their kind. Many had to resort to the stratagems of _pasche-paskero_ , musicians—playing in street corners, dancing, entertaining, and, where possible, pilfering. There had been nights when Haji went to bed feeling like his stomach was caving in, his ears ringing with the cries of his brothers and sisters, the desolate wails of his mother and the aggravated shouts of his father.

In this strange and hostile land, they had almost nothing to their name, and nothing in their hands. The only exception the tribe could boast of was the startling trait of physical beauty that ran in their strain, an elegance that was so incongruous to their frayed clothing and their dirt-smudged cheeks.

Given their state of poverty of course, it was an elegance bound to be short-lived, like an entrancing candleflame mid-snuff.

Regardless, it had been enough to draw the attention of two rich strangers, ascendant with the scent of macassar oil and tobacco, who spotted Haji and his siblings performing one day at the esplanade. They had been _gadje—_ outsiders. Clothing immaculate and shoes pristine; eyes hard and calculating.

Haji had mistrusted them on sight, mostly because he had sensed, in sick fear, what was about to come. A premonition of death, almost, although he hadn't realized it just then. Premonitions faded to dullness when you faced the prospect of death daily.

They had taken him aside, and asked him a great many strange questions. Gazes moving all the while, assessing, judging, evaluating. One man had inquired, rather bluntly, if he knew what the sexual act was—Haji's eyes had widened and he'd clamped his lips shut.

Of course he knew about that—there were certain pitfalls to sleeping in a crowded space shared with his parents. But his raw exposure to poverty had also taught him, early on, that men who asked these questions of children were men to run far far away from.

In this case, these very men had bartered him from his family for a plump loaf of bread.

It wasn't so much the indignity, the helplessness Haji had felt then. It had been the searing betrayal, the sheer sense of abandonment. Torn from his family without prelude or volition, given a set of clean, too-stiff starched clothes, a gleaming pair of shoes and a hot bath, and shoved into the tall ominous carriage and into whatever Fate had in store for him at these blank-faced men's hands.

The only thing he had left of his family had been a knotted blue ribbon, a _Roma_ talisman of protection

He had put the ribbon between a frayed scrap of cloth, pocketed it, and feverishly prayed, as he entered the towering gates of the Zoo, _please please_ _guard me from every bibaxt_.

He did not know then, as he did decades later, that he would finally take the ribbon off, the last shred of superstition dissipating in the midst of a much stronger feeling, the joyful liberty birthed by love. He did not know that, years and hardships later, he would wrap the ribbon in a pink rose, and leave it as an amulet to safeguard the very slumbering woman whose sharp mahogany eyes had fixed on him that distant morning, by the sloshing stone fountain.

Fate truly was a capricious thing.

He had feared her at first, as he feared and mistrusted most _gadje_. This sharp-tongued imperious creature with the flashing eyes, the dark mane of hair, called _Saya_. He noticed that her eyes glowed red when her temper was riled; she carried about her an otherworldly air he could not place, a sense of belonging neither here nor there; it was whispered among servants that blood was drawn for her to feast on each evening.

She was quarrelsome and capricious, elusive and tyrannical. Even the cats and the owls, the superlative omens of ill-fortune, fled from her path.

 _She is a witch_ , Haji concluded vehemently. _A terrible, bloodthirsty witch. The spawn of the devil._

It was reasonable, given the cold-gazed men who raised her, who tended to her every whim, and the cosmic labyrinth of Perdition in which they housed her. Satan's very own dollhouse. _Every witch belongs to the devil's gang_ , his mother used to tell him, and like every credulous child, Haji had taken the words to heart.

But his mother had also told him, before he was dragged to the Zoo, with tears in her shadow-smudged eyes: _Kair the cāmmodearer_.

_Make the best of it._

Except he wasn't sure how to.

Regardless, it was in Haji's nature to be expedient, to move forward without regret. Bitterness could not manifest for a child who had never known anything better. He knew he had to be brave, and accept this new meandering as How Things Are. It was not his place to complain.

This _Saya,_ if she truly were a witch, didn't act it. No witch would show such contrition, such softness in the wake of his tears. No witch would embrace him as though he weren't an untouchable pariah, impure racial refuse—hold him with such an infinite of compassion and murmur to him as though his thoughts, his feelings, were of importance to her.

And she certainly would not place his pink rose on her vanity, a boon to gaze fondly upon, when by all rights she ought to have flung it to the floor and trampled it to ruin along with every chance of his belonging in that vast household.

And, gradually, at her side, he adjusted to life at the Zoo. He grew accustomed to the luxuries, the refinements—things he understood that his family could never have afforded for him. The awareness tinged his separation in grief, but the memories soon faded to gray.

He was schooled here, taught how to read and write, how to dress and behave. Joel, Saya's guardian, had at first believed the boy was too old to pick up alphabet and numeric, science and arithmetic, but Haji had proved him wrong. He established himself to have a sharp memory, an earnest, inquiring mind, and a special aptitude for mathematics that was perhaps later the core to his finesse with the cello—for what is music if not structured mathematics?

Joel and Amshel were incredulous, but Saya was pleased. It used to frustrate her that Haji didn't know about any of the books she had read, about the characters or the stories.

With time, Haji learned to grow happy at the Zoo, learned to smile and laugh, and learned too, the contours and glimmers of Saya's laughter, the bell-like sound of her voice and the infinite warmth of her soft hands.

Saya had been his one true friend there, a beacon who lightened the shadow of his loneliness, who brought light into the dark corners of his seclusion.

Perhaps it was because she too, had never quite belonged, and because she too, was as lonely as he. Their shared isolation and eccentricities ceased to be so when they were together. They were two of a kind, kindred in mind and spirit.

Years later, blood too, would tie them together like his blue ribbon, as though the union were an inevitable segment in Fate's long-running play.

" _Haji_ ," Saya said now, sitting up in bed in her high-collared nightdress. " _You've traveled other places, haven't you? Can't you tell me where you've been? What you've seen?"_

Haji, in a high-collared coat with a ruffled white shirt, his favorite blue ribbon knotted under his throat, stopped thumbing through a book mid-page.

" _Hm_?"

It had been three years before Joel's birthday party, before their doomed precipice-picnic. Saya had been feeling unwell, and Joel had insisted she stay in bed until she was better. But immobility was impossible for Saya; there was something vaguely feline in her blood. She was ever-restless and mercurial, gifted with tremendous capacities of energy and exuberance. Illness was an impediment she stridently detested.

It brought no improvements to her disposition. Indeed, the times when she was ailing were her most churlish, her most taxing. Crockery and books were hurled on solicitous maids; glasses smashed and pillows shredded.

The conduct was most unbefitting to a lady, or so Joel chided.

In these moments, Haji was one of the few people who could dampen her raging temper. As her oldest and only friend in that massive household, he knew her better than perhaps Saya herself did.

Some of the servants teased him about this, most with a tinge of sneer. Haji was not one of the regular household staff, after all. From the beginning, his accommodations in the Zoo had been better, his chores more personal and significant. He was not shoulder-to-shoulder with Saya, with Joel and Amshel, but neither was he a common hireling to be disposed of at convenience.

Still, if his status was ambiguous, it did not bother him. His clan had coasted the line of ambiguity all their lives, rootless, nameless and homeless.

That morning, two maids watched him head to Saya's room. In low voices, they'd teasingly chanted:

_"I've seen you where you never were_

_And where you never will be_

_And yet within that very place_

_You can be seen by me_

_For to tell what they do not know_

_Is the art of the Romany…"_

Haji had gritted his teeth and pretended not to hear them. He'd been carrying a few books that Joel suggested he read to Saya in her room, in hopes of keeping her occupied.

Looking back on it, and on the nature of his purpose at the Zoo, Haji often wondered how many times he and Saya had been thrown together in these potentially-risqué situations, in Joel's hopes that a consummation would take place, that Saya would prove she could conceive as a natural living organism should.

And each time he looked back on it, Haji would feel immensely glad he'd kept his hands to himself.

Even if it hadn't always been as easy as it seemed.

" _Haji_ ," Saya prompted now. " _Tell me. Why don't you ever talk about your family? I'm sure there's so many things you must have seen_ _with_ _them_."

Haji hesitated, the big book still open in his lap. The curtains to Saya's bedroom were half-drawn; a thin shaft of waning sunlight flowed into the room, lighting a square patch on Saya's vanity, where Haji had placed the time-honored pink roses he always brought for her.

Today's flower looked pale and ethereal in the dull light, cradled in the small vase like an aromatic greeting.

Saya sat propped against the pillows, her dark hair loose and uncombed, tumbling in soft curls around her shoulders. One strand curved over her forehead; Haji's fingers itched to brush it away, to twine the gossamer tangle between his fingers. Sitting amid the fluffy masses of pillows and sheets, she looked soft-eyed and dainty, her cheeks flushed pink, limbs loose and languid in the dissolute torpor of too much sleep.

Haji imagined combing his fingers through her extravagant mass of hair, letting his fingertips glide down her smooth throat, knotting into the lace bows that bridged her collarbone. Tugging those bows loose, peeling the voluminous fabric away from her skin, sliding it down her bare gleaming shoulders and—

He flushed and averted his gaze. He was suddenly glad the book was in his lap.

As he'd grown into adulthood, the livid physicality of his thoughts for Saya both embarrassed and overwhelmed him. He'd known Saya practically all his life, yet it was disconcerting to suddenly feel these surges, these _yearnings_ , to be near her all the time, to talk to her, touch her—even if it was just gripping her waist to help her dismount her horse, or holding her hand as he helped her into the lakeside boats.

They were no longer at the stage where they could oscillate between being children and adults. In those days, an era painted in gold, they used to run through the Zoo's sprawling grounds like little children, chasing the peacocks and swans, stirring up the goats and sheep. They had drunk milk in oversize cups and grinned under white mustaches, climbing trees like monkeys, romping half-dressed in rainfall and taking cover in the dusty haystacked barn.

But as he'd matured, Haji had learnt to feel a reserve in Saya's company, had begun to realize what was proper and expected, and what was not.

He no longer tugged on Saya's skirt or grabbed her hands to get her attention, and he never touched her in front of company except to take her arm when escorting her into the carriage. He knew better than to let her wrestle with him in the grass, or let him view her in various states of _dishabille,_ rain-leaky barnhouses or otherwise.

Saya, in her ever-oblivious grasp of decorum, of modesty and propriety, was confounded by Haji's sudden formality.

She couldn't understand why he no longer splashed along the lakeside with her, why he averted his face whenever she lifted up her skirt to mount the horse astraddle when there was no one looking, or why he constantly blushed whenever she held her bodice away from her chest to fan herself on sunny days or sucked the blackcurrant jam from her fingers.

Her behavior in turn, did little to alleviate Haji's dilemma. Late at night, unable to concentrate on his books and sheet music, the bedcovers too heavy and the lamplight too harsh, he would find himself fantasizing what she looked like naked, searing red eyes and a wild waterfall of ebony hair cascading across willowy china limbs.

In dreams, he would picture her form rising from the murk of lonely darkness, luminous as some ancient Greek goddess from Joel's library illustrations.

Her impulsiveness, her free affectionate nature and adventurous unpredictable whims, roused in him a corresponding sense of liveliness, of wonder. With her the world ceased to be dull. He saw everything from her point of view, from a fresh and glowing perspective as though discovering life anew.

Conversely, the innocence she unconsciously projected, sheltered as she was from the jagged realities beyond the Zoo's walls, stirred in him a tormented need to protect her, serve her.

Haji had been a very young man then, but he'd known in his bones, as he still did decades later, that he would never meet anyone like Saya, or desire anyone Saya, and that he would never wish to, ever again.

She represented the nucleus of everything feminine to him, everything worthwhile and vital and precious.

And, at the same time, everything forbidden.

" _Haji_!" Saya said now, impatiently. " _You aren't listening to a word I'm saying_!"

Haji blinked, staring back at her. " _I…I'm sorry_."

Saya cocked her head, assessing him. " _Your cheeks are red. You aren't coming down with a cold too, are you_?"

" _I… no. I'm fine_."'

Saya sulkily crossed her arms over her chest. " _You've been behaving very strange lately, do you know that?_ _You never seem to pay attention to what I tell you. You never even seem to_ look _at me anymore. Do I really bore you so much?"_

Haji blinked. _Bore_ him? Heaven forbid.

" _That is not so_ ," he told her, with a quiet insistence that thankfully gave no hint of the exquisite turmoil seething within. " _I suppose I've just been…a bit distracted lately. I apologize. It has nothing to do with you_."

Saya sighed, her brow furrowing. " _I understand. Life at the Zoo can get quite… dreary. Before you came here, there was nothing for me to do, besides fencing and strolling the grounds. And there's only so much cello I can stand to play. It's been better, ever since you started living with me…but the routine must be taking its toll on you too_. _You're probably getting just as glum as I was_."

" _Saya, that's not true_ ," Haji said. " _I'm never…glum. Least of all in your company_."

Saya sighed, and struck a pillow with her fists in a sulky fit of frustration. " _It's just that everything is so_ monotonous _here. I want to get out of here soon, Haji. I want to go out and see the world. There are so many wonderful things I've never been able to appreciate. Huge churches and towns, trains and ships. I want to see blue oceans, and tall purple mountains, and deserts where there's nothing but gold sand, far as the eye can see. Wouldn't it be wonderful, Haji? To get out and witness all of that."_

" _I… suppose,"_ Haji amended, although his main highlight was not deserts and mountains and oceans, but that he would be able to stay at her side while she saw them.

Saya sighed another telling sigh. " _It would be such an adventure, wouldn't it? But there's no way Joel would let me leave sans chaperone. And he says you're still too young to take me anywhere. I don't see_ why _, though. You're even taller than Joel is, and that's all that matters, isn't it?"_

" _Perhaps Joel meant it in terms of—"_

" _In terms of what? Experience? Wisdom? How much wisdom does it require for one to solicit a carriage and arrange for porters to carry out luggage? Very little. Why, I warrant even I could do it myself—but for a lady to travel alone is unheard of."_

" _Yes, that's true."_

Saya frowned. _"I would have liked to be born a man. Then I could cut my hair short, wear trousers and travel however I saw fit. And I would brag about my swordsmanship the way that silly Austrian baronet from Joel's parties bragged about all his hunting trophies. Who did he think he was, anyway, harrumphing about how fencing was an unsuitable art for women?"_

" _He said needlework and adornment were the true makings of a lady,"_ Haji recalled.

" _Needlework indeed_ ," Saya scoffed. " _He probably hasn't touched a sword in his life. No doubt afraid it will cut his pretty pink fingers_." With a mischievous smile, she glanced at Haji. " _You know Haji, I'm sure, in a duel, even you could flay that pompous fool's clothes off. Shred them to messes like little ribbons. And I'd just stand by and laugh at him."_

Haji wasn't sure whether the ' _even you'_ was a compliment or an insult. Nonetheless he gave her a faint nod and an even fainter grin. " _It's an interesting notion. But…"_

" _But what?"_

" _I doubt Joel would approve."_

" _Mm. That's right. He was angry enough as it was when I accidentally spilled wine on the baronet's clothes."_

Haji arched a brow. _"Saya, we both know that wasn't accidental at all."_

Unrepentant, Saya covered her mouth and giggled, a lilting, chiming tune that had a curiously enlivening effect on Haji's nerves. _"Well, you have to agree that scarf he was wearing was ghastly. What did he call it, anyway?"_

" _I believe he called it an ascot. He said it was quite fashionable in London."_

" _It looked like a ridiculous rag I would give to a stable hand. If that's called_ fashion _, I imagine they must dress quite terribly in London."_ She sighed, her good spirits dissipating, face growing morose again. _"But I'd never get to travel and see it. Not by myself, at any rate."_

Haji didn't answer her. He wasn't keen to pursue a topic that made Saya look so ineffably forlorn. He much rather preferred her laughter. He was about to judiciously suggest that he read more to her from the book, but then Saya added, in a continuation of her prior remark:

"… _Unless I married and traveled with my husband, of course."_

At this point the air withered from Haji's lungs. His fingers tightened on the corners of the book.

Oblivious, Saya tapped her chin and went on, " _Yes, that might be a better way to go about it. Several young ladies are afforded the chance to travel, if they wed a wealthy man. Someone debonair and sophisticated, with knowledge of foreign nations. But then I would be required to have children. That's what married people do, don't they? I shouldn't like that very much. I'm not very fond of children. And they would be too much of a burden, traveling with. What do you think, Haji?"_

Haji swallowed. What did _he_ think? Was she _serious_?

" _I_ —" he began to stammer, but she cut him short with a wave of her hand. " _Never mind. That's a ridiculous idea, anyway. I don't want to get married. I really have no reason to."_

" _No?"_ Haji dared.

She shook her head, pensive. _"No. I think it's much better to wait, to marry someone I'd really love. That's how it should be. Maybe someone I'll meet when I finally travel. It's extremely important to love the one you plan to marry. Deeply love them. You think so too, don't you Haji?"_

" _Well, I—"_

He flashed back to distant memories of his childhood, when one of his cousins had been engaged within the clan. A gangling slip of a girl, barely sixteen. She hadn't loved the boy she was marrying, nor he her; the union had been based on expedience, on his financial collateral, his sources of livelihood, and on her domestic skills, her health and disposition, but not on love.

Poverty and privation quickly tore those rosy romantic notions to shreds.

He'd been only twelve at the time, but Haji had still found himself thinking how unfair that was.

" _Yes_ ," he heard himself say out loud to Saya. " _It's very important_."

Saya smiled one of her lovely glowing smiles. " _Do you ever plan to get married, Haji_?"

He hid a wince. " _Well_ , _I_ —"

" _Of course you would. Why shouldn't you? I imagine you'd make some girl a fine husband. Quiet and decorous and thoughtful_. _Hopefully she'll be just as sweet with you, and suited to your temperaments. I can imagine her now, really."_

He said, faintly, " _Can you_?"

" _Yes. Someone… shy, and modest, and_ _pretty like one of those porcelain dolls from my trunk. With the flaxen hair and blue eyes. Someone completely the opposite of myself, really."_

Haji discretely cleared his throat. _"Saya, I don't really think—"_

But Saya just sighed another melancholy sigh, and slumped back into the pillows. " _Haji, why don't you ever tell me where you've traveled_?" she asked, suddenly but not unexpectedly.

Her mind was like one of those Aboriginal contraptions Joel had imported from Australia—those _boomerangs_. They shot forward as though leaving forever, then abruptly arced back right to where they'd started.

" _You must have been places, I'm sure_ ," Saya went on. " _Amshel, he said you'd originally come from Russia. That you were born there, with your…tribe, I think that's what he called them. Why don't you tell me about them? What was traveling with them was like? It must have been so exciting, all that music and singing and colorful caravans."_

" _I…"_ Haji faltered.

How could he explain to her, that the fantastical, naïve pictures she had of _Gens du Voyage_ , taken from the misleading books she read in Joel's library, were the farthest things from the truth? How could he possibly tell her that the life he'd known had been cold and gray, steeped in hunger and deprivation, in discrimination and resentment?

His family had often resorted to street performances and dancing, true, but it had only been to fill their bellies and make ends meet. There had been no glamour, no magic in dancing across frigid cobblestones on aching feet, ears numbed and fingers stiff, eyes pleading strangers for coppers. There had been lighter times, true, such as when they had enough to eat, when the fires were warm and laughter resonant, but in the wake of their long toils, those times had been far and few in between.

Once he'd come to the Zoo, he'd had no desire to share knowledge of his family with anyone. In the early days, the instilled tradition of regarding all outsiders as _marimé—_ impure _—_ had been hard to shake off.

He'd spent a great deal of his time sullen and silent, a bristly little armadillo, wary of touching or being touched by anyone. He'd had an even lesser desire to divulge his tribe's customs and practices; those things simply weren't done in front of _gadje._ A childhood of discrimination and persecution did not cultivate friendly feelings for strangers.

But as time wore on, so too had the beliefs ingrained in him since he was knee-high. He no longer saw Saya or Joel or anyone in the household as _gadje._ They were simply part of the world he lived in, and Saya, at the epicenter, was simply _Saya_.

" _Come on, Haji. Tell me_ ," Saya persisted, propping herself up on an elbow. " _There's got to be something you remember? Where were you born in Russia?"_

Haji hesitated, then replied. _"In a place called Norilsk."_

" _Nor-ilsk?"_ She rolled the unfamiliar pronunciation carefully around her tongue.

" _Yes."_

" _Did you have a house there? Or… were you and your family always traveling?"_

" _We were traveling."_

" _Oh really?"_ She straightened up, her eyes brightening, excited as a child. _"Well, what was it like, wandering Norilsk?"_

Haji paused, thinking about it for a moment. _"Cold."_

Saya exhaled in a miffed huff. _"So I gathered, Haji. What I mean is, what things did you see there? What places did you go to? Tell me, did you ever visit Moscow? Petrograd?"_

His family had skirted along the edges of Moscow, but he'd been too young to remember much of it, except the time he'd been cursed at and pelted with rocks for begging outside a bakery in the biting wind. Petrograd, the tribe had avoided at all costs; the authorities there practiced a full-fledged extermination of _Roma_ folk, who were barred from entering the city.

" _No_ ," he lied softly.

Saya paused, and her eagerness dissipated when she sensed the heavy nuances of his tone and expression. Self-involved though she often was, she was neither dense nor blind; she knew there was impetus behind Haji's curt responses. She sighed and shook her head: " _Haji, I'm sorry_."

He stared at her. " _What for_?"

" _I think perhaps your life wasn't like the ones they describe in all those books_ ," she said with a sad smile. " _I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you in any way_."

" _You haven't_ ," he assured her. " _It was all… a very long time ago, after all_."

" _Mm_." Saya nodded, then reached out after a moment to touch his hand. It was a light, innocent gesture; nonetheless, Haji's skin prickled as though he had held his hand over fire. He hoped that his expression betrayed nothing of his feelings.

" _Tell me something happy_ ," she said, with a softer smile than before. " _Like… about the stories your mother would tell you. Or the songs she'd sing to you. Can you remember any of them?"_

Haji hesitated, mulling it over. He'd had little opportunity to hear stories; his mother had been a busy woman, and her eldest child had been afflicted with chores and duties. Nonetheless, he did have fleeting recollections of a song she used to sing, as she went about her daily tasks of washing and cooking. It had been so long ago he could barely dredge up the words or the tune; he could recall barely a stanza or two.

' _Her head is aching with grief,_

_as if she had tasted wine._

_She departs in quest of the lord of her bosom,_

_to share his joys and pleasures.'_

" _What_?" Saya blinked. " _What does that mean_?"

Haji shook his head, eyes shaded. " _It's a bit of an old folk song. It's about a maiden whose lover is taken away from her. So she calls for her steed, hoping to ride out to find him. It's a very old ballad. I cannot remember the rest of it._ "

He'd expected Saya to laugh, but instead, her expression was one of silent contemplation, pensive and faraway. " _That's too bad_ ," she murmured. " _It was quite pretty."_

" _If I remembered the rest of the tune, I would have played it for you on the cello_."

" _Yes, that would have been nice. And perhaps you could have sung to it. I like how your voice sounded. It was… soothing_."

Soothing wasn't the impression he'd wanted to give, but as ever, anything she approved of was fine with him.

Saya smiled distantly, and settled back into her pillows, peering up at the hangings of her bed. " _If my lover was taken away_ ," she murmured. " _I would head out to find him too."_

Haji studied her, made curious by this moment of whimsy, and by the words that did not sound like whimsy at all. " _Would you_?"

" _Yes. To rescue him, and bring him back safe. And if there were no steed, I'd head out to search for him on foot. In snow or rain, it wouldn't matter. That's what being in love is all about, after all._ "

" _What do you know of it_?"

The question, issued so involuntarily and honestly past lips otherwise used to reticence, took Haji by surprise. He bit his tongue, inwardly cursing himself.

But Saya seemed neither insulted nor offended by his words. They'd been spoken in a tone that was gentle and half-musing, born on the basis of fact, rather than contempt and skepticism.

She gave him a vague smile. " _I don't, really. I don't think anyone else knows, either. We only know what we know. What we learn about ourselves, about our feelings, from the things we do. And the people we do them for."_

Haji didn't answer. Her reply, convoluted as it was, made a strange sort of sense to him. He said, haltingly, " _So by going to search for your lover… you would know for certain whether you loved him or not?"_

Saya shook her head. Her smile had something esoteric, something calmly knowing about it. Haji wasn't sure whether it was just her lingering illness, or his own imagination.

Nonetheless, her words held gravity, held weight, and some wordless sightless view into the future that was yet to come.

" _If I went to search for him in the first place_ , _it would mean I always want to stay by his side_ ," she said. " _That I can't help but be drawn to him. So wouldn't that mean that I've loved him all along_?"

Once again, Haji didn't know what to say to that.

He only knew, in the trickling sense of a premonition, that some silent question had been answered that afternoon, a question he had never asked, had never even dreamed of thinking, and that in the answer, something had been discovered, something accepted and resolved.

Something that made his fingers twitch around the blue ribbon laced under his throat in a silent entreaty for defense.

It was the same feeling he would have, a few years later, when he would plummet from that dreaded cliff clutching a red lily in his fingers. The same feeling he would have when he transformed with a brutal outrush into a winged, black-taloned beast made so by her blood, when he would board that rattling train with her and she would bleakly tell him to make her a promise.

And again and again after that. In France. In Russia and Vietnam. The further they traveled, the wider the decades unfurled, the deeper he watched her drown in blood and despair—the stronger the feeling grew.

He couldn't have known then, as he did centuries later, that it had been that dreary afternoon, seated by her bedside with a musty book in his lap, that he had first realized he loved her.

During all their ensuing travels, violent and virulent, his blue ribbon would bear another purpose, the purpose of withholding his feelings, of keeping that vital knowledge secret, not just from her, but from his own heart and mind. When he would tie it through his hair, it would be a reminder, an amulet to keep out, not ill fortune and omens, but the vicious beast that prowled beneath his own blood, his own sinews and thoughts.

And when he knotted the ribbon around a pink rose, years afterward, it was not to stave off any calamities or _bibaxt_ , but as a silent exultation of freedom. Freedom from his own misgivings and inhibitions, his own past and uncertainties.

He left the rose as an offering before Saya's tomb, a delicate emblem of what she was to him and would always remain. And with the ribbon, he bade the old spirits from his tribe to watch over her, knowing this would be the last time he would ever ask them for anything, because he was finally free of those shackles, unchained from all he'd once been forced to withhold.

He would live and believe in only one thing now, and with this second chance, when _she_ finally awoke, he would do what he'd been supposed to, centuries before, without the qualms of repercussion.

_Make the best of it._


	21. In Paradisum

They see the factory crumple like a fragile house of cards.

Quivering, flimsy and weightless, collapsing on itself in a heartbeat's implosion. Multiple sections crashing down, smoke and fire volanoing out. The explosions reverberate in devastating fireworks, unfurling tongues of red and orange flame. Rubble rains all around in a ponderous hailstorm. Shattered glass arcs across the air like glittering diamonds. Dust is a heavy gray gush, rippling out from all sides, a magician's dramatic miasmic exit.

It is both surreal and beautiful, a hypnotic catastrophe onlookers cannot tear their eyes from.

Above the devastation, Helijets swoop and glide, their dark shapes stark against flame-red and smoke-gray. Five of them, like legendary apocalyptic horsemen. Their rotors move in dull blurs; their engines are metonymic _whumps_ drowned out by the roaring flames. They circle the wreckage slowly, watchfully, a horde of waiting vultures.

A dense curtain of dust hangs through the air, impenetrable and ethereal. But above, there are red veins in the sky.

Daylight.

Meg, Alecto, Tyler and David watch the cataclysm unfold, atop a distant plateau. Red Shield operatives are behind them, motionless in the face of the macabre spectacle. David shakes his head, narrow-eyed and tight-lipped. Tyler is ashen and of both twins, Alecto's face is rigid in shock and Meg has tears in her eyes.

The factory has been decimated to flaming wreckage, Chiropterans and equipment alike annihilated. They smell the blazing concrete and charred flesh even from the distance. There are rocks and dead Chiropterans scattered around the area like lint, a mass of burning, dismembered bodies and blazing wood and girders.

Above, the sky lightens to a pale, smooth color of blue. The air is suffocatingly still, as though dawn itself holds its breath.

It is Meg who breaks the lull.

"S-Saya…!"

The invocation seems to snap everyone from their daze. As one, they turn to look at her. Wincing, Tyler gently takes Meg's arm.

"Meg," he begins softly.

Meg jerks away, tears splashing her eyes. "No! Saya and Haji—they're still down there! We have to go look for them!"

David speaks carefully, concisely, as though balanced on a tightrope. "That explosion was extremely powerful. I'm sorry, but I don't think that they could have—"

Meg cuts him off with a wild shake of her head. "No! No no no! I'm telling you! There's still down there! We need to find them!"

"Meg, that blast was huge," Tyler whispers. "I'm so sorry, but there's no way they could've—"

"I'm telling you, they're still down there! Please! Please, Tyler! Help me look for them! There's still time!"

David shakes his head. "We can't just head immediately into the wreckage. It's much too dangerous. And we haven't secured any authorization to—"

"Screw authorization! I'm telling you! Saya and Haji are still in there! You have to help me find them!"

"I'm very sorry, Megaera, but we can't just—"

"If you can't then _I_ will!" Meg snarls, desperation translating quickly determination. She whirls to beseech Tyler. "Ty! Please! Take me there! We can still find them! I know we can!"

Tyler hesitates, a lover's empathy and a Chevalier's loyalty dueling with prudence. "Meg…"

"Ty! _Please_!"

Tyler pauses a moment more, then accedes, taking her by the waist. Megaera turns to her sister. "Allie! Come on!"

Even through her grief, Alecto seems to be weighing the situation, swiftly and carefully, as she often does. But at last, she appears to reach a conclusion. With decisive steps, she comes to her sister's side.

"Meg, you're sure about this, aren't you?" she says, but not in a tone that is indicative of a question.

Her twin nods fiercely. "I am! I'm telling you, I can feel it! Come on! We have to hurry!"

David steps forward, hand extended. "No, wait! That place isn't safe for—"

But Tyler has already tightened one arm on Meg's waist, and taken Alecto's hand in the other. In one powerful, propulsive leap, the three Chiropterans rocket up, expelling a cloud of dirt in their wake and into David's face. They soar into the pale light of daybreak, quickly-diminishing silhouettes, and swoop feet-first into the cloud of dust beyond, vanishing.

David coughs, shaking the dirt from his eyes, then scowls. "Dammit!" He turns to the other Red Shield operatives. "Come on! After them! We can't risk them getting hurt in that wreckage!"

The men and women nod, and take off after David down the plateau.

* * *

Meg runs fast through the blazing wreckage, struggling not to inhale the acrid fumes. Tyler and Alecto are hot on her heels, weaving past the dismembered bodies, the chunks of walls and doors. The air is thick with lingering smoke. The exoskeleton of the factory looms above them, vestiges of concrete still clinging to bare steel girders.

" _Saya_!" Meg shouts, feet crunching on broken glass. The ground is pocked and pitted, lurid as diseased flesh. " _Haji_?"

Abruptly, Tyler comes abreast of Meg, knocking away a concrete shard tumbling toward her. It hits the debris beyond them with a dull clatter, issuing dust.

Tyler grimaces, wrapping a protective arm around Meg. "Are you sure they're here somewhere?"

Meg nods. "I am! We have to look harder! We're close!"

"Christ, there's so much dust! I can barely see!"

"It doesn't matter! Help me look!" Her head whips from side to side, eyes frantic. " _Saya_! _Haji_! _Where are you_?"

Then, a few paces off, they hear Alecto scream. "Meg! Tyler! _Over here_!"

Meg and Tyler exchange quick looks, then whoosh to the direction of Alecto's voice. They are at her side in a twinkling; they find Alecto on her knees, digging frantically through blocky shards of rubble.

"They're down here somewhere!" she tells them, flinging a massive block of stone over her shoulder.

Meg and Tyler join her within another heartbeat, burying their hands elbow-deep in debris, even as Tyler asks her, "Al, how can you tell?"

Alecto jerks her chin at something lying on the left. When Tyler looks, he sees the salient flash of a long sword, imbedded blade-first into the rubble, coated in a film of blood and grit.

Saya's katana.

"Shit!" Tyler's eyes widen. He and the twins intensify their scrabbling, tossing aside rock clumps and wooden splinters.

There are deformed remains of Chiropterans, battered elevator doors and blackened portions of machinery under the rubble. Glass shards that glitter and splinter their flesh, streaming blood from cuts that heal instantaneously. Undeterred, the three dig deeper and deeper into the murk, never once stopping or slowing down.

Beyond them, they hear the shouts of David, the frantic footsteps of Red Shield's oncoming men.

They do not pause to answer. They simply burrow harder through the wreckage, tossing aside excess fragments and charred limbs. When David appears through the haze of dust, he is just in time to hear Meg scream—" _Here_! _Look_!" just as Alecto calls—"We've found them! _We've found them_!"

When David and the remaining operatives arrive at the scene, they see Saya and Haji, scorched almost completely beyond recognition, mottled in livid bruises, still intertwined by a long shattered spike that impales them together.

Lying there in a crater of rubble, with no more than a few minutes' of life adhering to their bodies.

* * *

The wreckage is emblazoned across every newspaper and magazine in the country. Reporters flock to the scene like bees to honey; images of the now-familiar smoking factory are cycled again and again across every existing news station. The mysterious project. The government Napalm. The countless Chiropteran bodies.

It is a story that smacks of conspiracy and scandal, and the ever-voracious media gobbles it up.

Tongues wag, flashbulbs pop, speculation and hearsay, fact and fiction assimilate into accepted disorder. Images are examined, views are expressed, eye-witnesses interviewed and opinions cast.

_"Some sort of clandestine genetic engineering project…"_

_"Is it true that the government was smuggling nuclear weapons into the building?"_

_"I'm telling you, there were really alien monsters in that place!"_

_"Can you comment on the rumor that the factory was a terrorist stronghold?"_

_"They were mutants of some kind, man! I'm telling you! With glowing eyes and sharp fangs dripping blood!"_

_"Investigations are underway, when there are more details gathered, they will be released to the public…"_

And on and on and on.

* * *

Alecto and David stand in the lobby of one of Red Shield's bases, and watch the latest news report on the television screen.

Onscreen, David is standing before flashing cameras and waving microphones, blank-faced and suited-up, the ultimate epitome of certified government official. He addresses the reporters around him in a somber monotone.

"It has been made apparent that the factory exploded due to nothing more than a careless chemicals leakage. The scientists within the facility were testing a new form of vaccine on cows, hence the so-called _mysterious monsters_ discovered at the wreckage. The leaking chemicals ignited on of the main generators in the building, and led to a fire that the factory staff was unable to put out in time…"

"What about the Helijets reported bombing the scene?" demands one reporter.

"That is an incorrect report. To the best of our knowledge, there was only one chopper sent to scout the area, and that too in order to assess the damage and look for survivors…"

"What about the heavy artillery found in the wreckage? Were there really terrorists in that facility?"

"There were no terrorists. I repeat, this as simply an unforeseen accident. Now please, if there are no further questions…"

David flips the channel with the remote. He stops at an ancient black and white Shakespearean play, all belled sleeves and high-waisted flowing dresses. The hero and heroine converse in florid prose, scarcely understandable to the unschooled ear.

Alecto sips thoughtfully at her coffee, watching the screen, and turns to regard David.

"Vaccines for _cows_?" she says dryly.

David shrugs. "Made more sense than mutant flamingos."

"Red Shield must've had to twist some arms for the government to allow this cover-up."

"A few officials in Berlin owe our organization favors," David responds. "The strings pulled weren't cheap, but it was well-worth it."

Alecto nods, lips pursed, then turns to the wide glass window beyond her.

In a sterile white room, gowned scientists move in a slow, dancelike pantomime, hovering around two motionless figures on separate beds. Saya and Haji. Steeped in sedatives, washed and dressed in smocks. IV's of blood are hooked to both their arms. Their burns and bruises are fast-healing, rendering them more recognizable from the scorched cadavers they first were when brought in here.

David follows Alecto's gaze, then turns to regard the blue-eyed Chiropteran Queen. "How are those two doing?"

"Recovering," Alecto responds, with tangible relief. "They've both lost a lot of blood. The doctors say that if we hadn't found them in time, they would've died for sure."

"How long will they be unconscious?"

"It could be a few days. Or a week or more. The doctors haven't specified. Saya and Haji's bodies suffered a lot of trauma during the bombing."

"I'm amazed they're still alive at all, really. Given the explosions—"

Alecto shook her head, sipping her coffee. "You don't know Saya and Haji like my sister and I do. It takes more than this to end them. Haji actually survived the infamous MET bombing during the war, you know."

David nods. "The Option D sequence. I read the records about it. But reading isn't the same as seeing firsthand. And now I have."

"And?" Alecto quirks a brow. "What do you think?"

David smiles faintly. "The records describe Saya as some indestructible emotionless superwoman. And Haji as some unspeaking, cold-fish fighting-machine. But that's obviously not the only side to the story, is it? No story is one-sided. I always thought so, and now I see it clearly."

"What about that Sanborn guy? Did Red Shield find his remains?"

"Yes. There were signs of his crystallized body in the debris, not far from Haji and Saya. Our analysts believe he may have been on top of them, which is what shielded your aunt and her Chevalier from the explosion in the first place. They survived by pure luck."

"It isn't the first time," Alecto drawls.

David on the other hand, is grim. "I also checked out old files of Sanborn, from Red Shield's dossiers. Apparently he was reported as Killed-In-Action during Saya's Vietnam spree. Our organization closed the case there and then. No one was even sent to search for his remains, to find him in case he was still alive. The organization… more or less turned its back on him."

Alecto bites her lip. "I see."

"When I read this, I remembered, on Tyler's audiofeed, what Sanborn said he'd been through at Amshel's hands. And it struck me that Red Shield was as responsible for driving him crazy as perhaps Saya was. We abandoned him in Vietnam, and he never recovered from that loss and betrayal."

"Out there at the facility, we nearly abandoned Saya and Haji too," Alecto adds, but not unkindly.

"We did," David concedes, and releases a tired breath. "And that was stupid of us. Your sister was right to go out and look for Saya. After all, your aunt fought and suffered for so long, to end the Chiropteran threat. She never gave up, and Red Shield is obligated never to give up on her in turn. We owe her our lives, because she's created this future we live in now. She's our worthiest comrade."

"A comrade, eh?"

David nods. "Yes. And it's essential not to turn your back one. When I was young, I used to think it smacked of sentimentality and weakness. That your goals could be attained through your efforts alone. Perhaps they can be, but you need the people who help you on the way. They help you reach your success as much as making the struggle easier. You'll never get far without their support. And there will come a time in your life when you'll realize you're stronger because of them."

Alecto's lips curve. "What is that? A personal philosophy?"

David shakes his head. "It's something the second David passed down to his family, after the war. What he told his son, and, years after, what my father told me. It's become a traditional mantra of sorts."

"Like the Miyagusku _Nankurunaisa_?"

"Right. Only less catchy."

Alecto wrinkles her nose a fraction, snorting, and sips her coffee. "What was your name, anyway, before you took on the title 'David?'"

David offers a subtle grimace. "Eugene."

" _Eugene_?"

"Yes. But I've always liked 'David' better."

"Oh really? I don't."

The somber man turns to regard Alecto, bemused, but his expression lightens when he sees she is smirking behind her coffee, a smile both tart and refreshing like fresh-sliced oranges.

He smiles back, and the two turn to watch the doctors move slowly around the sleeping forms of Saya and Haji.

And behind them, on the television screen, the Shakespearean actor intones, " _'What's gone and what's past help, should be past grief…'_ "

* * *

She awakens to the soaring hum of the cello.

The sound floats across her ears, weightless, ethereal, so impossibly smooth. Ribbons of blue silk churned from melody, gently stirring her ears, luring her away from the warm womb of slumber. She imagines the cello bow moving in velvet harmony against the strings, the horsehair shimmering gossamer against long gleaming twines.

Each stroke evokes sweet caresses, light and effortless as a spring breeze. Barely touching, yet so exquisite for their tantalizing evanescence.

It is a tune she knows… she recognizes it, has heard it played before, many times. She knows those rich ascendant notes, the haunting lightness of each chord. But never in her life has she heard it played so beautifully, so harmoniously. It is not a simple composition. It is the song of freedom and joy, lulled to life and sound.

Freedom as gentleness, joy as floating serenity.

No outburst of force, no struggles and exertions—just the soaring liberty of rising, higher and higher, stroke after stroke, taking flight, never to be weighed down, free forever.

She thinks of the bow gliding downward across the strings, striking C and G, fingers dancing easy and effortless. Hypnotic sounds streaming forth, a floating tranquil wave. She hears them, _feels_ them, clear and soft as petals weaving across wind. The cool whisper of it across her body; the softest shivers of gooseflesh across her skin.

She wonders, in a languid lull, where she is.

If this is death, it is not what she has expected. Neither dark, nor terrifying, it is serene and gentle. Not yanking her, kicking and screaming, into the frightening unknown—but carrying her, airy and supine, to a greater zenith with every glimmering stroke.

She can bask in this melody, this glorious sweetness, forever.

But her next sensations are of touch, of scent. She lies on a bed, its sheets warm and heavy. Hair falling over her eyes, body in voluminous folds of cotton pajamas. Consciousness hazy with sleep, floating on the sublime flow of music. Aroma of peaches, of sweetish familiar perfume, strong in her nose.

She hesitates, then opens her eyes slowly, blinking, taking in her surroundings. Familiar room. Trunks and boxes, brimming with vibrant cloths and jewelry. The lamplight turned low, infusing the room in a cozy gold glow.

Where…?

Oh yes.

The twins' apartment. Their extra bedroom.

Memory is slow to return. Saya lays there for another long moment, basking in the dregs of sweet sleep, listening to the enchanting hum of the cello, a low, ecstatic moan of freedom. Who is playing? It sounds so…

Realization hits her then, a sharp blow to the brain. She jerks up, eyes snapping open, but is hampered by two heavy forms draped around her. Two girls on either side, lying fully-clothed on the sheets while she is nestled snugly underneath. Limbs sprawled awkwardly, dark hair falling across pillows and calm china faces, pointy shoulders bracketing Saya like wings.

Meg and Alecto.

Her nieces are fast asleep, expressions both solemn and childish. Alecto's eyes are moving gently behind closed lids; Meg's mouth is slightly open, hair falling in fuzzy tufts around her face. Both are in baggy pajamas identical to Saya's, curled up on her left and right like little children, or kittens.

Saya Sandwich.

Saya hesitates, but decides against waking them. Her right arm is drawn out of the covers, resting limply across Alecto's shoulders. A blood IV attached, the shiny maroon bag propped to a silver stand by the bed. A long dark line of red snakes from the bag, ending at the inside of her arm. Saya studies the drip, then glances at the pale blue light outlining the curtained window.

She smiles faintly. Breakfast in bed, hm?

The smile fades in the next instant, even as the cello continues to croon its shimmering velveteen tune. The memories come clinking back, one by one, a shower of coins falling into a coffer.

The facility. The Chiropterans. The insane Sanborn. Fighting and flames and terror. The Napalm warning, the _horrible_ explosion. And…

"Haji!"

His name rips involuntarily from her throat, resounding back to her ears, hoarse and low from excess sleep.

The sound does not rouse her nieces. Nor do Saya's movements of sliding out from the sheets, gently extricating herself from their grasp to leave the bed. On her own feet, she sways a moment, dizzy and lightheaded. She feels the lethargy that always accompanies her post-battle slumbers, where her body concentrates furiously on healing itself in the wake of maulings, slashes and bruisings, while she lies quiescent and dreaming.

Saya pushes the hair out of her face her free hand, then carefully extracts the needle taped to her other arm. She closes the stoppers on her blood-bag, seals the needle with a cover lying on the nightstand, and winds the cord in two loops around the stand. All with practiced efficiency.

In the background, the cello still thrums, glittering skirls of melody drifting into the room. Wrapping tenderly around her, soft as a lace cloak.

Battening on its calmness, Saya stands for a moment by the bed, and smiles wistfully at her sleeping nieces, who in repose look no older than they did when she first saw them, that night in the rain-ravaged MET.

She had intended to kill them and herself that night. To send all of them in one fell swoop to the same realm she had sent Diva.

How different things had turned out from what she'd planned. And how glad she was that they had.

After smoothing the hair from Meg's brow, and gently straightening Alecto's askew pajama top, Saya tiptoes out the room, lured by both overwhelming impetus and the mesmeric strains of music.

Fundamental needs come first. She stumbles to the bathroom, relishing the feel of hot water on her skin, the icy breath of toothpaste. Her body feels as though it has accumulated centuries' worth of grunge, yet the shower-water runs clear as it swirls into the drain.

Emerging in the kitchen, fully-dressed, she sees Tyler rubbing the back of his head as he sits perched on the counter, sipping from a bag of blood like a juice box.

He chokes mid-gulp when he sees her. "Saya—you're awake!"

Saya nods, mind still lassoed to the cello's music. "Where's Haji?" she asks, her voice raspy.

"Oh? Him?" Tyler blinks, then smirks at her. "The Maestro is in the balcony. Giving the pigeons a live performance. Our neighbors always threaten to call the cops when he plays at night, so he sticks to dawn. Meg and Allie don't mind. I guess after all these years, they've gotten used to him playing. They always sleep right through it."

"They're still asleep right now," Saya murmurs.

"I know. You've been out a pretty long time. Almost a week, I'd say. Haji and the girls took care of you. I mostly just knocked stuff over and got in the way." He smiles, sheepish, and sips from his bag. "Haji was in your room practically 24-7 since we brought you here. Still was, until a half-hour ago. Meg and Al got sick of him hovering at your bedside and finally chased him out. They said they'd watch you, while he played cello or something. I guess they must've dozed off."

Saya blinks slowly, struggling to absorb this cheerful spate of words, to piece together what is relevant. "I was out for… a week?"

"Seven days, yeah. The doctors said it might take long for you to wake up. As for Haji—he was on his feet just three days after being brought in. I think that guy's allergic to beds or something. I mean, I'm a Chevalier too, but I still like to lie down every now and then. Brings back good memories, y'know. But that ain't so with the Maestro."

The cello is strumming silky strains into the air now, each note following the other, softly and smoothly, like cool raindrops released into clear water. Saya remembers what the tune is. Faure's _In Paridisum_ , one of her old favorites.

She closes her eyes for a moment, just luxuriating in the haunting tune. Then she opens to regard Tyler. "He's in the balcony?"

"Yeah." Tyler grins and gulps from his blood bag. "I'm sure he knows you're awake, which is most likely why he's playing something that chipper. Otherwise it's always this sad wailing funeral stuff. Go say _hi_ to him, before the twins wake up and monopolize you."

But Saya's body is already in motion, irresistibly propelled toward the delicate strains of music. It wanes even as she pushes the heavy doors to the balcony open, even as cool wind and blue radiance of sky flutters to greet her.

The balcony is wide, surprisingly so, given the size of the apartment. Potted plants hang aloft from ropes and antique chains, brittle tufts of green hovering along the ceiling. Beyond Saya, the city looms, a stolid tapestry of flat roofs and glinting windows under the pale-blue sky. The sun has not yet struck the horizon; everything falls in a dreamy sapphire glow.

It is the same shade as the cello's music. A shade not of aggression, but ephemeral fragility, something short-lived and fleeting that is made all the more beautiful in its transience.

The last notes of music dissipate as Saya steps into the balcony.

She turns to their source, blinking slowly, and smiles.

Haji is there, just in the process of setting his bow and cello aside. He rises when he senses her presence, but his movements betray no impatience. He has learnt long ago not to be swept up in the giddy tides of anxiety. There is a always this calm euphoria to their every reunion, the bliss of two people who can accept this felicity no other way save in reverent silence.

She takes him in, the pale light silhouetting his dark clothes, a still and silent pillar. The faint wind stirs tendrils of hair around his face.

Then he is whispering her name, _Saya, Saya,_ pale hands reaching for her, and she rushes to him in a breathless helpless daze. They collide in the center of the balcony, whirling tight in an embrace. He lifts her until her feet are gliding along the floor, an ardent Viennese waltz.

She hugs him tightly, eyes squeezed shut. Lips pressing to any part of him she can reach, the sharp hollows of his collarbones, angular lines of cheek and jawline and cool shells of ears. His grip on her is crushing, immovable. She hears herself murmuring his name, again and again, an ecstatic litany, as he dusts eloquent chorales of kisses on her own face.

The serene music she heard before, its soaring freedom, is nothing in the face of _this_. She feels as though she has been plunging headlong through darkness, for hours and days, and finally groped her way back to _home_. Relief renders her dizzy. Her shoulders shake, the noise from her mouth like spangling laughter.

But then she understands it is not laughter crashing over her at all. It is tears.

They spill from her eyes, hot and unstoppable, alongside ragged flowing sobs. The noise is musical, melting, a song of deep grief and deeper happiness, melded into this overpowering sensation without language. She has no other way to react to it, to express it. The simple joy that seizes her has no outlet save for tears.

She nearly lost him again, but now here he is—still alive, _still_ _alive_ , and the influx of emotion renders her senseless, voiceless.

He is already holding her so tight her feet dangle above the floor. She grapples him closer, legs roped along his hips, and strains up to him just as his mouth claims hers, and then suddenly they are kissing, hungry and breathless and unceasing, and all the emotions felt, all the longings and fears left unexpressed, transmute into this insatiable sighing reclamation of lips and tongue and teeth.

And salty tears.

Distantly, Saya hears behind her, thudding footsteps, two voices calling, clear as bells, " _Saya? Saya, where are you_?", ensued by Tyler's murmuring. She smiles through her tears, but does not release her hold on Haji; her Chevalier in turn grips her so tightly she is certain ribs would crack if it were a human in his possession.

And beyond her, the first steaks of dawn strike the horizon, tugging the muted blue veil off the city. Sunlight cascades warm across the balcony, gilding the edges of the green leaves around her and Haji, circling each one in a fiery gold, just as Megaera and Alecto come bursting in to waylay her.

She hears the distant drone of traffic beyond, the world awakening to the almanac of another day. Cars and horns and voices, a faceless bustle blind to her existence, to her family's. But Haji's arms are tight around her, the imprint of his face cool against the curve of her neck, and her nieces' voices ring bright in her ears, small hands on her shoulders, her face, warm and welcome as sunlight.

And in their midst, Saya smiles, smiles despite the running tears, because she has finally come home.

* * *


	22. Coda: Anchor

_Coda: Anchor_

She held the cello against her bare skin; the wood thick and polished despite its age. Her beloved Stradivari, which Joel had imported centuries earlier at the Zoo, specially-crafted to her request. The makers had assured Saya—then little more than a child in strawberry frills and crushed white lace, running little fingers eagerly over the instrument's glossy surface—that it was the sturdiest brand available.

 _Nigh indestructible_ , promised the bearded salesman with a broad smile. _You will be playing it generations afterward for your own grandchildren, mademoiselle. This instrument will last you centuries on end._

He had not spoken falsehoods.

Saya balanced the cello's long neck against her bare shoulder, the wood cool and smooth, heavy on warm flesh. The tail-pin was propped at the floor by her foot, where a corner of bedsheet negligently trailed, the rest wrapped about her body in a soft blue whorl.

She sat at the edge of the bed, sidesaddle as she had done during the times when Joel threw parties and asked her to play for his guests. Her lower-body was modestly swathed, sheaves of sheets flowing like a long gown, but her upper-body was left bare, facsimile to age-old sculptures of Greek goddesses.

Venus rising from her seafoam womb to hailing angels, serenading them with her own music in return.

The room was illuminated in the shifting gold of candlelight, stubs of candles propped in holders on the nightstand. Candlelight was always her favorite light. Not in a sense of romance, but because it reminded her of that bygone era at the Zoo, with its soaring walls and polished parquets, the glittering chandeliers and smell of roses and beeswax.

That, and she loved what candlelight did to Haji's skin. Smooth and parchment-pale, suffusing with capricious shades of gold and red and yellow. Each slow flame-waver seemed to accentuate all the lithe angles of limb and the shadowy dips of bone that composed his frame, an impeccable ivory statuette made flesh.

His skin was still warm where it pressed against her back. He lay on his side facing her, head and shoulders at her right, tangles of hair dark on a white pillow. His arm was loosely slung about her waist, the hand pale and luminous against the blue sheets that draped her legs and cascaded in seawaves around the cello.

Saya closed her eyes and brought the bow against the strings. She let loose a soft melody, no structure or purpose, simply playing for the serene resonance of it. The bow stroked across each chord, light and quick, notes tumbling forth one after the other like deep sighs and pensive laughter. Giving voice to her own silent exultation, her fulfillment, but still bearing a budding undertone of rue, the gravity born to all things not destined to last.

As she played, Haji's fingers moved along her leg in a silent rhythm, white spider-fingers swirling and circling each clef against the bedsheet, leaving phantom impressions on the skin beneath.

It was an old game they once played, in the days of the Zoo. A contest, a musical joust. They would play sonatas of well-known virtuosos, Mozart, Beethoven; one of them would study the notes as the other played, faster and faster, and, upon stopping, would in turn pick up the final note and play his or her own tune based on the remnant, a melodious _Exquisite Corpse_.

Haji's blunt nails stroked shivery facsimiles of every note now, while Saya's bow sawed across the strings. Rosin and fingertip luring resonating sounds that hung glittery and ponderous across the air. A bittersweet eulogy, a cry exuding from deep within her psyche.

A secret, a quandary, and a confession.

The music was sweet, enchantingly lustrous… but with a sadness that swelled with each prancing motion of her fingers, each deft glide of her bow. Saya kept her eyes closed through the entire sequence, lashes a shadow on her cheeks.

As she played, images bloomed behind her eyes, a miasma of regret and blood and flame.

 _All the lives I've taken,_ she thought sadly. _All the blood I've spilled. It's never going to go away._

_Sanborn was insane, but he was right about that. What's done, cannot be undone. That responsibility is never going to leave me._

The bow arced low across the strings, issuing a deep mournful hum, rich and dark as warm-spilled blood.

_Even though I'm happy now… even though I'm glad I'm back home… it will never erase what I've done._

_It won't change what I did to so many people._

_Their lives will still be on my head._

The music was swelling, growing louder, agitated. Haji's fingers across her leg seemed to be strumming unconsciously along, mimicking the subtle dancing of her own fingers across the chords.

The melody filled the room like a bittersweet shroud of incense, vibrating through her bones, raising goosebumps across her skin—though whether this was because of the cello, her railing thoughts, or Haji's ministrations, she wasn't entirely sure.

_Even if I cry a thousand times over, plead forgiveness, crawl, beg, it can't make up for what happened in Vietnam. None of it can._

_No human life can be replaced, there's no way it can be compensated._

_Not Dad's or Eliza's or Irene's or Riku's or Diva's._

_Not even Sanborn's…_

Haji's fingers had stopped moving against her leg. In contrast, Saya's own playing had intensified, hoarse moaning notes unfurling with each flash of bow on strings.

The A string, highest one, wailed a timeless aria of loss and regret, ascending higher and higher, the haunting deliria of a ship tossed at stormy sea, adrift and despairing, lashed by waves and lightning. No anchor to pin it down, no harbor to seek recourse, just this heaving brutality in darkness, thundering surf culminating into a climactic upsurge, the current of notes crashing into stillness.

The last chord struck with livid abruptness. The silence that followed was like a palpable blow, seeming to highlight the air in deep red.

Saya sat there with her eyes still closed, and slowly lowered the bow. Unbidden, she felt the sting of tears in her eyes, the aching dryness in her throat.

_I'm never going to erase what I've done._

_The blame will stay with me forever._

_It will last as long as my own life will._

Against her back, Haji's skin had gone cool now.

He seemed to sense at last, the static tension along her shoulders, the nails made white on the cello bow with pressure. Slowly, he straightened behind her, propped on his Chiropteran hand.

She felt the cool expanse of his chest against her back as he leaned close, the cool pads of his fingers on her temple as he combed back her hair. The cool flutter of his breath against her ear, raising a delicious chill of gooseflesh.

" _Saya?"_ Tentative, questioning. " _What is it_?"

She hesitated, not wanting to answer. Withholding insecurities was a terminal facet of her nature. Nonetheless, she had learnt from Haji that there was a vast difference between reticence and self-infliction. Embers of grief, when hoarded within, did no good but scald her own thoughts, sear her own emotions.

There was another name for suffering in silence, for dealing out the deathblow as judge and jury.

It was called suicide.

Saya swallowed, and forced herself to reply. " _I was just… thinking_."

" _About what_?"

" _About what I did in Vietnam. About… Sanborn_."

Haji was silent. He hesitated, and she felt his fingers curl gently on her shoulder. His face, close to hers, was seraph-white in the oscillating candleglow. Dark strands of hair fell along his forehead, smooth, shimmering. Even though the look he wore was so grave, the sight of him riveted her eyes, held her magnetized.

No expression on him, be it rage or hatred or sadness, seemed to render him anything less than so preternaturally beautiful.

Perhaps because every emotion he felt, every thought and feeling he ever allowed himself to disclose, was so sincere and earnest, so free of artifice, that it could not possibly be anything but _his_.

" _Saya_ ," he said now, in a tone of low certainty. " _That night in Vietnam… was not your fault_."

She shut her eyes. " _Oh, Haji, how can you say that? You were there too. You saw what I_ —"

" _What I saw were the actions of someone who had no choice left but to fight. What I have seen, time and time again, ever since you took up your sword and set out to kill Diva_."

" _Not that night, Haji. That night was_ —"

"— _a divulgence of your deepest needs, your worst fears."_ Haji's eyes were shaded. Voice soft and faintly wistful. " _In Vietnam, I saw, for the first time, how truly desperate you were. How filled with rage. All you could do was swing your sword and fight on. Not because you wanted to, but because it was the last remaining defense you had."_

" _And so many people paid the price for my defense…"_ she breathed.

Haji shook his head. _"Saya, if you did not fight, you would never have survived to end the war itself. You had no other choice."_

But Saya wouldn't have it. " _I killed so many people, Haji. Nothing will ever change that. Whether I meant to do it or not, it won't make it any cleaner. Sanborn… he was driven insane because of what I did to him. I destroyed his life. I took everything away from him. And god knows, he isn't the only one_. _There must be hundreds, even thousands of others_ …"

" _Saya_ …" Words seemed to elude Haji. The most he could do at that moment, to communicate his empathy, to comfort her, was draw her close as he always did.

She sighed as cool arms overlaid her's, a smooth encompassing sweep. The cello's long neck still rested against her shoulder, her fingers on the pegbox. Haji's own hand covered hers, while the Chiropteran one closed about the small fingers that gripped the bow in a quivering vice.

She felt his cheek against her own, felt his lips. His eyelashes were feathery and pliant against her skin.

Saya pressed back against him, luxuriating even as she grieved inside. " _Sanborn, before he died, he said… that I'd never undo what I'd done. And Haji… he was right. I ruined his life. I ruined so many others. Nothing can change that."_

" _Sanborn had a chance to live his life again_. _After he was free of Amshel, he could have found another reason to go on. But he didn't. Instead of accepting life, he chose to wallow in death. His mind held him prisoner long after Amshel died; he was trapped by his own hatred."_

" _And who's the reason for it, Haji?"_ she interjected quietly _. "I am. And I can't stop thinking about it now. I can't stop… remembering. All the deaths on my account, all the suffering. I can't turn my back on it, but I can't redeem myself in any way. It won't bring anyone back."_

Haji's fingers entwined with hers, resting on the rosewood pegbox. His lips fluttered along her temple, the curve of her ear. With her back pressed tight to his chest, his body was cool and still, a solid white sepulcher that seemed to blot out all her ugly clamoring thoughts, to enclose her in a protective barrier of calm.

Saya closed her eyes and turned, warm forehead rolling against his, and his hair fell loose and shimmering around her as their lips met. The kiss was fervid, hypnotic, tasting of regret and sweetness and of multitudes of things still left unexpressed. But more than that, it was imbued with the tenderness of relief, the profound gratitude of having him here, at her side again.

When their lips broke at last, Saya shakily drew in air, and pressed her face against the curve of his neck. Her lips mouthed the words along his skin, a butterfly's brush:

" _Haji_? _Have you ever… regretted all the things that happened during the war?_ _All the people who died because of us?"_

Haji hesitated, exhaling. " _Saya… there were many deaths I regretted during the war._ _And there was always remorse._ _But I also knew that if we did not fight on, the results would bring far greater remorse. To dwell on it was an impossible luxury."_

" _And so… you let yourself forget? You never think about the ones who are dead?"_

She felt Haji swallow, the subtle dip of his Adam's apple against her temple. His voice seemed to thrum across her spine, the low vibration like a cat's purr. " _It's impossible to forgot those who died, Saya._ _But it would do more harm than good to dwell on the past, to remain engrossed in what is already lost. Moving forward is the only was to survive."_

" _Whose sake did you decide this for? Yours?"_

" _Yes. And more than that, for yours."_

Saya flinched and dropped her gaze.

Gently, Haji took her chin, made her look at him. The candles lit two gold points in his pale-blue eyes.

" _Saya_ ," he whispered. " _No one denies that the war cost precious lives._ _And we grieve for that loss everyday. But to reside forcibly in those memories would make us just as foolish as Sanborn. You have a second chance to live now, the way you want to. Not halfway, but completely. You're free to make something of it. "_

" _I know,"_ Saya said softly. _"If all I do is wallow in my guilt, I won't be trying to prevent those nightmares from happening again. I'll just be reliving them. Worse, I'll be throwing away this fresh start I've gotten, to be with you and the girls. But Haji…"_ She swallowed dryly. " _It still won't wipe away what I've done. The people I killed… will always be dead."_

" _And you should remember them. Respect their memories. But not without reminding yourself that you're still here. Throwing your own life away won't bring them back. To coast along, suffering in silence, would just mean laying waste to yourself. It would be…"_

" _Like suicide?"_ Her voice held a quality of abstraction, almost a wonder. " _Like what I wanted, after I'd killed Diva_?"

Haji inclined his head, but did not answer.

Saya sighed, interlacing her fingers with the cool hand on her face. His skin was a shade paler than hers, bleached more so by her proximity; the fingers long and white as ivory, knuckles large prominent knobs. Her own flesh was more varied in tone, tanned along the fingers and arms, the insides pale and fingertips hued in pink.

Amid the tangled blue bedsheets and iridescent candlelight, they made a startling image, two forms hewn from different sources, yet birthed for amalgamation, caramel on cream.

" _Back then, all I could think of was dying_ ," she added in a whisper. " _It was all I had to look forward to. After I'd stopped Diva, I was glad I'd finally get to rest in peace. No more fighting and pain. No more blood._ " Her eyes closed, and she let off a soft sigh, " _Each time I killed, I always thought of that line from Joel's old book, ages back._ _Remember, from his favorite play_?"

Haji paused a moment before murmuring, " _Macbeth?_ "

She nodded briefly; her voice was a bitter lilt. " _'Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? Nay, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.'_ "

Haji tilted his head, eyes soft with something akin to sadness. But then his mouth curved faintly at the corners, a secretive smile, something tender, and wistful, and knowing.

Saya's hand, the one clasped in his Chiropteran talon, was lifted, the Brazilwood bow still held in her grasp.

Against his demonic appendage, her own hand looked too fragile and brilliant, lily-luminous and too pure to exist.

" ' _All the perfumes of Arabia_ ,' "Haji said, quoting from the same play, " ' _will not sweeten this little hand_.' "

Startled, Saya stared at him for a moment. Then, unbidden, she felt a smile bloom.

It was so like Haji, to bring her a salient reassurance, a boon, even in the direst of times. They both knew each other so well, fears, needs and insecurities; an intimacy that withstood the wake of generations. Where in others it should have borne indifference, for Saya and Haji, it just added more spice—for this was the communion of minds and souls that others so longed for, but could never understand or attain.

Clinching the scaly Chiropteran hand in her own, Saya brought it to her lips. Flesh hard, metallic-cold on her mouth, yet so paradoxically gentle in grip, a monstrousness that belied itself.

Haji winced, an impulse to draw the hand away echoing within him, but fast-fading as she held on. Ever since she'd seen him, winged and full-fledged, at Sanborn's factory, he had been wary of baring any Chiropteran elements to her again—even ones she'd accepted without batting an eyelash before, his clawed hand included.

Relapse, is what Saya assumed it was.

But his charming anxiety bore little basis; she was as much enchanted with him as ever, unafraid, undaunted, and perhaps made even bolder by what she'd seen. It did not appall her that she'd witnessed that long-hidden facet of him. Hadn't Haji witnessed her at her very worst, time and time again, during the war? In Vietnam?

In her mind's eye this was as good a way as any to return the favor.

She wanted him, all of him, in any state, it didn't matter. Monstrous or scarred, ravening or raving, he would still always be Haji.

He would still always be _hers_.

Drawing back, she looked up at him, earnest. " _Haji, I can't erase everyone who died because of me. All of the mistakes I made. That's something that will stay with me forever. But… as long as I have you, the memory will never take my life over. You, Meg, Allie… and before that, Kai and Riku and the others… you all taught me to go on. You made me want to move forward, to live, even when I thought I couldn't. I owe you so much for that. And for alot more."_

Haji's eyes, deep-set, twilight-blue, glimmered in the wavering candles. Hair falling in black curls, like subtle musical clefs turned to silken hair.

Saya raised her hand, brushing a strand off his brow, and the lock glittered as she twined it about her fingers. Her smile was as soft as her voice:

" _I can only be what I am. And I can only live as I know how. But as long as I have you, I know I won't lose my way. I'll always have a reason to look forward to tommorrow."_

Haji's mouth lifted faintly at the corners, the effect hypnotic by candleflame. " _Nankurunaisa_."

That mantra they still shared, even centuries later. The one that marked the moment everything between them had changed, where everything had at last been laid bare as gleaming shells on ebbing tide.

Saya's own smile was a radiant bonfire. " _Nankurunaisa_."

She felt him lean closer then, hands moving on hers, bringing her fingers back to the cello's pegbox. The Chiropteran talon luring her bow-aloft palm to the cello's belly, over the lustrous strings. She felt the whispery silk of his long hair, falling across her shoulders, brushing her cheek, and his face was white and cool alongside her own.

The candles burned low around them, gold shades deepening to ochre, enshrouding the room in shadow. But Saya's eyes were as schooled to darkness as Haji's. They had dwelt unceasing in that darkness for years before, immersed in its wake during the war; this mild satire was little more than a kiss from an old friend.

And Saya's fingers knew the cello's structure as thoroughly as Haji's did, as thoroughly as they knew each meridian and gradation on one another's skin. Haji's Chiropteran hand covered hers, holding the bow between them; slowly, the human fingers on the other hand knotted to her smaller ones, guiding them across the strings.

Saya closed her eyes as the bow came flashing down on the chords, fingers strumming fast. The melody that resonated was the same she had played earlier, mournful and mellifluous, raw palpable loss pouring out with each raucous stroke of rosin, each nimble tweak of her fingers.

The rise and fall of notes, a harmony that ran thick and sweet as honey, suffused the candle-lit room.

She thought again of the storm-tossed ship, solitary and homeless, lashed by brutal tides and thunder. Denied reprieve or entitlement, shoved and battered by the elements, with no rest in sight. A storm that went on and on, while the ship swayed, drifted, anchorless and utterly alone.

But then Haji's own hands guided hers, not controlling, not forcing, but smoothing out that strident volume, that turbulent pitch. He brought the bow down with a smoother languor, directed her pounding fingers to softer equilibrium. Saya felt the music oscillate, trembling, dropping lower, turning to a deep satin hum she felt all through her bones.

She shivered and pressed back against Haji, letting this new harmony dilute her, both sensorium and sonata. Haji's lips pressed to the line along her neck, cool tongue an exquisite slice. Her responsive gasp was a quivering cantata that fused with the drawn-out saw of bow on strings.

The music was calmer now, gentler; a diminishing tumult where the booming waves softened and slowed, where the roiling black clouds swirled to gradual nothingness.

She imagined the darkness lifting, the rocking ship decelerating to a sway, lax and languid. Haji's fingers dancing with hers, the bow gliding across strings, poured out a deep ethereal moan, serving as a gateway to moonlight in her mind's eye.

Silvery and translucent, breaking through the clouds in a straight beam, birthed by a glowing white moon.

She thought of the notes wavering, glittering like the seawater, as the ship sailed on, a breathless spectacle of liberation and wonder. The horsehair caressed at the strings; she felt them throb like heartbeats, heard the notes sway like the tranquil sea waves, a moonstruck sea divided by a path of silver, the lone ship drifting to stillness.

It was a different song now, a song of surety, of joy and calmness. The ship was flogged no longer by breakers and fear; it sailed to a sinuous halt, the anchor unfurling to tether it in place, to render it a part of the bewitching brilliant ocean.

It was the song of Saya's own struggles, her own advent to this point, and suddenly her lips turned to seek Haji's with blind yearning, the music as much of a palliative as his mouth opening hungrily against hers.

The image of the ship on sparkling sea stayed with her, long after their interlaced fingers slipped from the cello strings, and the bow slithered by degrees to the floor, and the music plunged to silence as the last of the candles burned out to intimate black.

* * *


End file.
